Lorre and Gayle Family commitment began long before marriage
By Keith Eddings, The Eagle-Tribune, North Andover, Mass. | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
After a few minutes, he drops his mitt and begins dribbling a soccer ball, then kicking it at the picnic table where his parents sit, hoping they'll get up and join him.
"He likes to be moving,"
Beyond the solid white fence surrounding the 1850s farmhouse that has been in Fritchy's family since 1944, an American culture war still rages over the rights of gay men and women like Fritchy and her wife,
But that question was settled in
When
They married a month later in
On
For Camden, that's another settled issue when classmates at the private elementary school he attends ask about his family.
"The first time they hear it, they're like, 'You have two moms?' You don't have a dad?'?" he said.
He keeps his response simple. "So? What's the big deal?"
The love between Camden's parents developed after they met as undergraduates at
Their secrets ended late on
"Listen, I'm scared to tell you, but I have to tell you," Fritchy said, beginning a conversation that lasted all night in the dorm room they shared.
"We talked for hours and hours," she said. "We felt it was the right thing and that it was for life. We made that decision then and there."
"That night," added Green, who was then 21 and is now 46.
"We made that vow to each other," said Fritchy, then 20 and now 44.
After finishing their degrees, they moved to
They moved again in 2001, to the old
Aunt
The documentary depicts the battle at the
Through the documentary, Aunt Germaine, then 82 years old, struggles to understand the complexities of the issue. But her support for her niece and her partner never wavers and she speaks plainly.
"He's a rat," she says, leaning her stooped and shrunken body over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, after Fritchy explains that
"How is Gayle taking it?" she asks.
"She's having a tough time," Fritchy responds. "She's trying to hang in there. She says we have to believe."
"You're not doing anything wrong, you and Gayle," Aunt Germaine says.
"We'll be all right because we're stronger than this," Fritchy tells her aunt, even as she tries without success to hold back tears. "It's part of why we deserve to be able to be married. It's because we have to endure these things, together."
Fifteen years after committing themselves to each other, the couple got the rights and protections the state bestows on married couples.
The cost of living a union without those rights had been great. Among them, the couple spent at least
Uncertainties remain today. To comply with
Fritchy and Green said they celebrate two anniversaries:
"Every
___
(c)2014 The Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Mass.)
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