2018 Primetime Emmy
& James Beard Award Winner

#Resist in Virginia, with Love and Proper Beer

#Resist in Virginia, with Love and Proper Beer

Imperial IPA in Virginia

“By the power invested in me by absolutely nobody I declare you husband and wife!”

Once those words left my lips I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. I’m no priest, but in a last-minute reshuffle I had been asked to preside over the ceremony of a couple of very good friends in the heavy Virginia heat, and I needed a congratulatory drink to calm the nerves.

Slipping past the international crowd that had assembled for the special occasion, I reached the bar and spotted a beer I’d never heard of: Dogfish Head 120 Minute.

Hoppy and tasty and cold, it hit my lips and I realized why the couple had selected this beverage to get the party started. An American bride of Ghanaian and Filipino heritage was marrying a British chap from Sheffield, a city well-known for “proper” beer.

Orange, Virginia was the venue they had chosen well in advance, and they had invited people with all kinds of cultural backgrounds. Everything had been planned before August, when white supremacists marched just 30 miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia carrying torches and chanting “You will not replace us.”

As I swigged back that bottle of beer the alcohol helped me relax. The speech I had just delivered mentioned the importance of celebrating multicultural and interracial love, and the importance of doing this now, in Virginia.

Finding the right words had not been easy for a white British bloke like me, partial to avoiding all kinds of conflict, but my wife—who is American and black—helped me find them.

As I asked the barman for a second beer, the mother of the bride thanked me for the kind words I had said about her daughter and son-in-law and promptly dragged me to a photo shoot.

Arranging couples in front of the camera, the photographer wanted one of the bride and groom and my wife and I. Four people—two black ladies and two white chaps—smiling wide on the steps of a glorious homestead.

We were not putting our bodies on the line at a rally against white supremacists, but as the camera snapped away, I thought perhaps we were protesting against hate in our own little way.

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