Saturday, February 21, 2004

The e-mail has since been posted on the Web and forwarded around the country. Randi Reitan of Eden Prairie, Minn., received it from her sister on Wednesday, forwarded it to 100 more people and quickly got on the phone to a San Francisco florist.

"We got to be at somebody's wedding out there even if we were just the flowers," she said. "I just hope whoever received them just has this lovely, long life together ... . It doesn't bother me that I don't know them -- it's kind of fun in a way. You're connected to two souls."

The mother of four was particularly moved by the idea because her youngest child, Jake, 22, a senior at Northwestern University in Illinois, came out as gay when he was 16. People in the town where they used to live threw eggs at their mailbox, scrawled anti-gay epithets on their driveway, bashed their car's windshield and wrote anonymous letters saying Jake was "sick and sinful." Their minister told the family Jake could change.

"You just can't imagine what a message it is way back here in Minnesota. You turn on your TV, and there are more and more couples getting married," Reitan said Friday through tears. "I'm hoping whoever got the flowers realizes how special it was for them to do that. They're doing it not only for themselves, they're doing it for a young man back here in Minnesota who looks forward to finding someone to love, to cherish and to celebrate that love in a wedding and call it marriage."

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