Doug and Marty
"Marriage is not just political ... it's spiritual, it's personal, it all sort of came together as I was driving home. I got home and I got down on my knee and I asked him to marry me."
"Before the internet, there were telephones—gay men would connect this way first ... technology has always connected [queer lives]."
When Marty and Doug first met, they had both been married to women for a number of years and had two children each. In the 1980s however, gay lives and cultures were underground, secret, hidden. The only way queer men who were not publicly out could connect was through phone sex lines.
So this is how Marty begins the story of their love: "Before the internet, there were telephones—gay men would connect this way first...technology has always connected [queer lives]."
Marty had been recruited as a full professor to build the Human-Computer Interaction Design program at Indiana University, and Doug was a pastor in a small town outside of Madison. But neither of them was out. Both had been married to women (Marty was still married) and had 2 kids, and were taking it slow.
On these phone calls, they talked for months until Doug finally broke the rules of the anonymous sex lines. As Marty says "Doug was the first person who broke through, who told me more about the reality." They shared stories about their lives, and their families and children.
"Doug was the first person who broke through, who told me more about the reality."
Despite the fact that they were hundreds of miles apart, Doug committed to driving fourteen hour round trips every other weekend to see Marty. It was on these drives, through rain and snow, that he realized they needed take the gamble. Marty asked Doug to move to Bloomington. And he asked his wife for a divorce.
"People talk about how heterosexual and homosexual relationships are different, but dealing with a divorce teaches you that they are not at all," comments Marty, describing how he would mail his child support payments to his ex-spouse in envelopes addressed to his daughter so she would feel better.
Doug and Marty built a life together, connected on a deeper level and honored each other's Jewish and Christian religious traditions.
"I saw marriage as a heterosexual institution, not as something for me. When I saw a TIME magazine cover that said ‘Gay Pride’ I realized that that was me. As things were evolving in society, I think that things were evolving internally, emotionally within me."
Both Marty and Doug talk about how the Windsor decision moved them. For so long they had just seen it as an institution and seen the political and the financial aspects of it, but the decision finally made them feel welcome, made them feel part of society: “it made me realize that marriage is not just political... it's spiritual, it's personal...we are now part of this thing called America.”