Cabler CNN featured a gay couple
together 61 years and ready for marriage in New York.
Richard Dorr, 84, and John Mace, 91,
met in 1949 at the Juilliard School for the performing arts in
Manhattan.
“We didn't know each other,” Mace
said. “I had a part-time job at the Juilliard to bring in money
and in walked this young man. I knew my life was changing right
there and then. And it did.”
“He would find excuses to come and
sing for me,” Mace added.
Dorr said “I want to sing for you”
really meant “I want to be near you.”
The men denied their relationship to
outsiders for years, which Dorr called a burden: “No more making
believe that you're who you're not. That's a burden that people who
are gay carry all the time.”
Mace said his Italian family is the
“marrying kind” and that he is eager to see passage of a marriage
law in New York.
“Why not?” Mace asked. “Why not
complete this relationship?”
The couple added that they hope the law
would mean an easier time for the next generation: “They deserve
better than what we had. I mean, it was very difficult. It's
terrible to be looked down on and considered a second-class citizen.”
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)