For Throwback Thursday, here’s a wide-eyed, occasionally cringeworthy profile of a gay couple in Hillcrest from 1974, our first year in publication. 

There was a party in Little Rock Saturday night for a couple celebrating their fifteenth anniversary. They are buying a house on Kavanaugh Boulevard, where they live in middleclass comfort and nurture the fragile organism known as a happy marriage. They are both men.

The enduring homosexual relationship usually is thought to be a rarity, but the couple on Kavanaugh said they know of twenty to twenty-five gay relationships of long standing in Little Rock.

Perhaps it is because their lives lack the glitter of the drag crowd or the blatancy of the militants that the gay married have remained comparatively anonymous while homosexuality itself has been gaining public attention and a degree of acceptance. All that effectively sets this middle-aged couple apart from others is that they are of the same sex. Their house is ornately but tastefully decorated. Each has a life insurance policy naming the other as beneficiary. Each works hard, attends church regularly and supports the local police. Their social altitudes are conservative enough to approach a gay puritan ethic.

Roy and David, both in their forties, devote considerable effort to their jobs and to their relationship. They regard their success as the reward of hard work. “We have stayed at home and worked and have been able to accomplish and acquire some things,” David said.

Although Roy and David think of themselves as being married, their relationship has not been formalized in a ceremony. “We’ve never felt any need to,” Roy said. “We know how we feel about each other and that’s all that’s important.”

More here

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