Current Events > Thinkin about gay marriage/relationships

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David Hyde Pierce was in a relationship with a man for 27 years before they got married. Gay marriage was legalised and then quickly de-legalised, and it was during this period I think that he came out as gay to criticize the handling of same-sex marriage.

When it was finally legalised federally, he married his partner of 27 years. And they're still married.

Elvira has spent 20 years in a gay relationship with a woman. I don't remember the story, but I think she was her personal trainer and one thing led to another. She left her husband and began living with her girlfriend, and they've been together ever since. Just learned after looking her up that her middle name is Gay and that she's 71 now - and frankly, she's doing fantastic for 71. Good shit.

This one is more of a footnote, but Nathan Lane was similar to David Hyde Pierce - he'd been in a long-standing relationship since 2002, and he married his partner in 2015. I read this great story about him coming out to his mother, and she was like "I hate you, I'm ashamed to have a gay son", and he was like "love you too, ma". He went on to say that "once I got her head out of the oven, we were fine".

I'm glad to see as many enduring queer relationships as I have, but it always makes me a bit sad to think of Robert Reed. He was the guy who played Mike Brady in the Brady Bunch, and he was a closeted gay man his entire life until two weeks before he died.

He was bitter about the show because he thought the role of chipper, clean-cut, all-American dad Mike Brady was saccharine and that the show's plots were hollow, cheesy and shit. He would actually fight with the main producer and send him these long scathing creeds about how garbage the scripts were - but the producer in question has noted that when he went off like that, he was right. They would go back and improve the scripts based on Reed's complaints.

So he sounds like a pretty notorious asshole - people were apparently aware of his homosexuality and the pressure that that put on him, but it was also the sixties and if it ever came out, everyone on the Brady Bunch was out of a job. Robert Reed was also not a total monster, like other prominent character actors of the day - as a matter of fact, all six original Brady children have spoken highly of him during their lives.

Cindy's parents were going through a bad divorce during the show's run, and what Reed would do is he would take the kids fishing and out to see national parks and stuff - that sets off alarm bells when you think of adult men taking children who aren't theirs out on these big trips in the sixties, but he was a good man. He never took his anger out on the kids. He was gay, miserable, trapped in a role he hated and he lashed out because of it. But he never lashed out at the kids.

He kept in touch with Florence Henderson over the years, and it was her who he called with news of his terminal cancer. With two weeks to live, he called her so she could let the other actors know, and so she could perhaps speak about it. And she did - nowadays, we know about Robert Reed and some of his struggles as a queer man living in the sixties. We don't know a great deal, he was a very private man, but we know a fair bit.

The reason I think of Robert Reed when I think of these queer relationships is because I wonder if Robert Reed was ever happy like that. One of his lovers has come forward, but I don't think it was a recent one who cohabitated with him while he was dying. Was Robert Reed loved in the last few years of his life? Did he have that comfort and security?

I hope he did.

Still am