After a series of near-misses and misunderstandings, Keola Akana, 54, and Ethan Wung, 35, celebrated their first anniversary as a couple at last year’s Light The Night For Equality candlelight vigil at the Hawaii State Capitol.

“It wasn’t planned that way ... it just worked out that way,” Keola remembers. “It was so great seeing everyone - ministers, community leaders, GLBT people, straight allies - just celebrating love between people.”.”

But it was a celebration that almost didn’t happen ... many times over.

Near Miss #1: Ethan noticed Keola at functions with mutual friends, but thought Keola was in a relationship with his roommate, the Rev. Jonipher Kwong.

Near Miss #2: Some time later, Rick, Keola’s former roommate and friend of Ethan, took Keola to Unity Church for a movie and they again caught each other’s eye. Ethan thought Keola was now with Rick while Keola thought Rick was interested in Ethan and backed off. “You don’t hit on your roommate’s boyfriend,” Keola laughs.

Near Miss #3: After Keola discovered Rick was not interested in Ethan, he headed for a party he knew Ethan was attending with the intention of asking him out, but Ethan had left early.

It finally happened at a friend’s 40th birthday party. “I mercilessly flirted with Ethan and asked him out ... the first Saturday in March ... at Spices,” Keola fondly remembers.

The couple are a wonderful example of the old saying that opposites attract.

“He’s a computer techie-type,” Keola jokes. “The computers I had were reel-to-reel. We had to type and use white out. Ethan is also an animal lover.

“If I let him, he’d have a house full of them,” Keola says as he notes that their housepets Pookie the dog, and Rocky the cat, have an extended ohana outside ... a feral cat and two black kittens living in the bushes outside their Hawaii Kai townhouse.

“I never got to have them growing up. My parents wouldn’t allow them,” Ethan explains, "... sort of making up for lost time."

Keola, on the other hand, never had time for pets, as he returned to Hawaii from law school in Oregon to take care of his ailing father. “I swore I didn’t want kids because I had one, but mine went from adulthood to childhood,” says Keola.

Their faiths also took extremely different paths.

Ethan, a naturalized citizen from Taiwan, was raised atheist.

“We had very little religion,” Ethan says. “We never talked about it. It was more of a philosophy than a religion.”

Upon moving to Boston for college, Ethan “rebelled” in the opposite way most college kids “rebel.” Alone and knowing no one, he sought out a faith group at Tufts College near Harvard.

“They became my extended family,” Ethan recalls. “They were welcoming and really pulled me in. They didn’t like gay people and - looking in - it’s telling one person what to believe. Until you step out, you don’t believe the hold faith leaders can have. Most just say what the leader says, so I totally understand cults now. When I came out to them, they wanted to change me ... they put their hands on me and began to ‘pray it away.’”

Hawaiian born, Keola is a self-described “cradle Episcopalian” and was very involved in the church as a child and while in college.

“I had phases of not being involved,” Keola says, “and though I always had belief, I didn’t have time. After my father died, I focused on me.”

When Keola did return he joined a congregation at the Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal church in Kaimuki that reminded him of the family church on Kauai. Eight years later, Keola has served on the board of Integrity, a GLBT group working towards full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments in the Episcopal Church.

Keola was a delegate at 2009 Hawaii Diocesan Convention, where he orchestrated the passage of three resolutions by the Episcopal Church:
1. To allow gay and lesbian memebers in a monogamous relationship to become ministers and bishops;
2. To develop a ceremony for same-gender blessings; and
3. To encourage the state legislature to pass, and the governor tosign, the civil unions bill.

Ethan works at a private company, and Keola works at the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, which seeks to educate the community about non-discrimination and enforce the State’s existing anti-discrimination laws.

“We’re luckier than other couples in some ways," says Keola, "because my co-workers at the Commission have an understanding about non-discrimination, and there are other GLBT people working in my office. We have no problem being an openly gay couple with co-workers and friends."

But because both Keola and Ethan do not work for the state, they cannot share a medical insurance plan the way married couples can.

Keola explains, “Since we cannot marry, even if we were both state workers and Ethan was on my policy, if I died before him, he wouldn’t be able to continue with my insurance. For many people, this is a real hardship, and it’s not fair.”

The couple says that the 2009 public hearings for the civil unions bill were especially painful for them when opponents of equality attempted to paint the issue as a “faithful vs. the heathens” fight.

“Sexual orientation is a gift from God,” Keola says. “To be able to love someone and have a relationship is a loving thing given by God, and we should share that gift that God gave us. This is your inner self ... how your circuitry is. You don’t 'choose' that. For the male testifiers [at the Senate hearings] who claimed this was a 'choice,' then that tells me that they choose to be heterosexual ... that they were attracted to both genders and chose women. But that’s not the case. That is how you are wired. That’s your circuitry.”

“I don’t know how they (the opponents) define family,” Keola says. “It (a union) is the ability to procreate like they claim ... well ... some heterosexuals can’t procreate so why are they allowed to marry? Why not let two men or two women? When the law allows, there are clergy - straight ministers - who will solemnize [a same-sex union]. The church and clergy should not be agents of the state. Churches should be able to bless whatever unions they want. It’s the state that should be about rights and responsibilities.”

Ethan - usually the more reserved of the duo - forcefully adds his thoughts about the people who, during the last legislative session, proclaimed his and Keola’s relationship wasn’t a “real” family.

If opponents of equality don’t accept his family, Ethan explains, “then I don’t accept theirs. Your family is just as useless. Worthless. If you invalidate my family, I’ll invalidate yours. If you make up lies about me, let’s see how you feel when I make up lies about you.”

But Keola vows to continue the couple’s quest for social equality.

“God is working through us to make sure this (civil unions) happens. God is with us. God is on the side of marginalized communities.” •