By the way, Judas Priest singer Rob Halford got married to his longtime partner Thomas last year. No, your invitation didn’t get lost in the mail. Halford told Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears on his Queer the Music podcast this week that after years of putting it off the couple finally made it official in a small, private ceremony last year.

“We got married by the cactus outside on December the something or other, about a year or so ago,” Halford, 74 said. “He’s [Thomas] from Alabama. Extremely conservative. I stopped asking, ‘Let’s get married.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married.’ ‘Oh, let’s just get married. We’ve been together forever.’ ‘No, I don’t want to get married.’”

But then, on one of the couple’s “night walks,” Thomas appeared to have a change of heart and told Halford that they should get married after three decades together, so the rocker went straight home and phoned a pastor.

He described a simple ceremony with just a few guests, saying, “It was obviously me and him and an officiant, as they call them, who are legalized to marry people,” Halford said. “Two of my dearest friends, Jim Silvia, who was Priest’s [tour] manager forever, his wife. There were just four of us around the pool, around the cactus, the heavy metal cactus. And it was over in an instant. But it was just a beautiful, simple ceremony.”

Shears also asked if Halford thinks attitudes towards sexuality have changed in the metal world, with the singer saying yes, but it depends on where you are. “America is still incredibly homophobic,” said Halford. “I’ve lived here for a long time and I’ve seen a lot happen since the ’80s. And really it gets me angry and upset, but when I go on stage and perform with Priest, some guys will say, ‘I love Judas Priest, but I’m not gay.’ You know that thing – ‘I’m a huge fan of Priest, but I’m not a gay guy’ – that still lives with me now to some extent. It might be a fraction.”

Halford hailed the great strides the LBGTQ community has made over the past half-century, but said there is much more work still to be done. He said we have a way to go until everyone can pick up on the message to, “Love everybody, not be judgmental, let people live their lives how they see fit for themselves. There should be no rules on how you look and how you speak and how you dress. All that should be an open book, because that’s what love is.”

Shears also asked Halford to describe coming out on MTV in 1998, which came during an tossed-off comment he made while promoting his supergroup side project 2wo. “And I go, ‘Well, speaking as a gay man, this is,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” Halford recalled. “And then I heard somebody’s clipboard drop on the floor, because I had literally formally announced to the world that I’m a gay man. So I did that show. I went back to the hotel, sat in the room, going, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t care.’”

Judas Priest is in the midst of a fall North American tour with Alice Cooper that will hit Holmdel, N.J.’s PNC Bank Arts Center on Friday (Sept. 26).

Watch Halford on Queer the Music below (wedding talk begins at 23:25 mark).