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Being Gay In America: A 50 Year Love Story

The love between John Darby and Jack Bird has been on solid ground for more than half a century. It is the social landscape around the gay couple that has shifted.

After they got together in 1959, they kept their relationship a secret, save for an inner circle of gay friends. Today, Darby and Bird walk hand-in-hand, occasionally sharing kisses or sweet words like many other married couples.

“It was the society we lived in,” Bird, 84, said in an interview with AFP in the couple’s home in a retirement community in the heart of San Francisco. “I learned I was gay, but I hid it.”

Darby, 86, and Bird will celebrate their 54th anniversary as a couple in July and their fifth wedding anniversary two months later.

“I will always remember putting this on his finger,” Darby said, touching the wedding ring on Bird’s hand. “It was a marvelous day.”

“It is so important to realize that gay life is so much more than just sex; it is love,” he continued as Bird nodded.

“It would be lovely if we could die together, just go to sleep holding hands and let relatives get rid of everything for us.”

Darby was freshly back from trips to Cuba and Mexico when he went to a party at a friend’s apartment in San Francisco in 1959 to celebrate Independence Day, feeling very much the “closeted tourist” and alone in his sexuality.

“It was just something you didn’t talk about,” Darby said. “There was a lot of homophobia in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”

It was a time when professional, single men lived with ‘male assistants,’ keeping what went on behind closed doors private. It was tolerated that an uncle or aunt might be gay or lesbian as long as it wasn’t discussed.

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May 09, 2013 in "Love Is Never Wrong", Gay Marriage, Gay Relationships, Gaytwogether Couples, Relationships, Waiting / Dating / Mating | Permalink | Comments (0)