MSNBC Anchor Thomas Roberts and his partner of 12 years Patrick Abner will tie the knot on September this year. Roberts talked with The New York Observer about his wedding plans, the Chick-fil-A controversy, Marriage equality and the fact that now people can stop asking him when does he think Anderson cooper is going to come out.
And Mr. Roberts says his late-September wedding to Patrick Abner, of Merck Pharmaceuticals’ HIV/AIDS division, and his public persona as a gay man, are unlikely to hurt his career at MSNBC—not least because, unlike certain newly out cable newsmen, he makes no claims to objectivity. “I am not objective when it comes to equality. And that means for all. I want it for you, for me, for everybody … It’s written in our Constitution: life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and what’s wrong with talking about that? Nothing.”
The Manhattan wedding is to have about 150 guests, and Mr. Roberts’s attention has been diverted by the process of shedding unwanted weight. “I was on the treadmill for three miles this morning. I will be on it for three miles tomorrow. I had a Red Bull for lunch and I eat gum. I’m the typical groom!” His desk was cluttered not merely with his lunch—a pack of peppermint—but also an academic text on Loving v. Virginia and an MSNBC briefing packet on Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential options.
We asked Mr. Roberts how the gay movement—consumed over the past week in a battle over the actions of Chick-fil-A, a Georgia-based chicken sandwich-monger—could distinguish between signal and noise. Mr. Roberts didn’t see it that way. “They’ve been a longstanding company, I think since the 1950s, based in Georgia. I would love if we could figure out what they did for Loving v. Virginia back in the 1960s,” he said referencing the landmark case striking down anti-miscegenation laws. “I would venture a guess: I think I know what they would say.
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