The men were married United Methodist ministers before announcing they were gay.

AUGUSTA (AP) – While same-sex marriages are being performed in various places in the United States, two Maine pastors will be going to Canada to get married next month.

The Rev. William Gordon said he and the Rev. Richard Rossiter will marry April 24 in Toronto, Ontario, one of three provinces where same-sex marriages are legal.

“If anyone had asked me a year ago, I would have said I don’t need marriage, I don’t want marriage,” said Gordon, pastor at the Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church in Augusta. “But now I realize this is so important that it needs to be fully celebrated.”

Both men were United Methodist ministers before they announced that they were gay, which violates church rules. Rossiter, 45, is now the executive director of an HIV services organization in Lewiston.

Gordon, 48, said a mutual friend introduced them at a church conference. At the time they had wives and children. They are now divorced and have been together for two years.

The men have five children between them, all of whom plan to attend the wedding.

Gordon said they will marry at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, which he said paved the way for a political and legal challenge that resulted in the legal recognition of gay marriages in Ontario in June 2003.

Same-sex marriage is now also legal in British Columbia and Quebec, and together the three provinces represent more than half of Canada’s 32 million people.

Allen LaPan of Augusta, a deacon at Gordon’s church, said it’s time a homosexual couple in the area took it upon themselves to get married.

“I’ve been in a relationship for 37 years and it’s finally come to civil acceptance,” LaPan said. “It’s nice to see that governments now say we have the same access as (heterosexuals). These acts of civil disobedience are wonderful. It’s like our very own Boston Tea Party.”

Gordon and Rossiter have taken steps to ensure that they have some of the same rights as spouses, even though Maine law doesn’t sanction their impending marriage.

Each assigned the other power of attorney for health care and finances. They also set up wills that will enable their estates to be divided according to their wishes.

AP-ES-03-22-04 1243EST