When Dan Finch and Del Turner met in 1974, the thought of being out — let alone being partnered with a family — felt like a pipe dream. Finch also believed that Turner, 6 feet 8 inches tall and a former collegiate basketball center, probably had a wife and 2 1/2 kids. But with the couple's 50th anniversary on September 7, and a wedding set for Thursday, September 5, Finch and Turner have shattered expectations while living through LGBTQ history.
Finch and Turner met while working for the same construction company up in Washington state. "I couldn't miss him," said Finch in a phone interview with the Bay Area Reporter. "I was just blown away by Del."
The pair quickly grew close, and, on their first date, spent 13 hours out on the coast with a bottle of wine and a tent constructed of a tarp and driftwood. On that freezing January night, the pair started down a path five decades long. (Turner has Parkinson's disease, so Finch did most of the talking in the interview.)
Just months after that first date, Finch and Turner, now both 79, decided to quit their jobs and take an eight-and-a-half-month trip around the U.S. and Europe. "Before we even left, we promised each other we would do our best to live to be 80," said Finch, "and we're almost there."
With almost no money, the pair traveled from the Canadian border to the southern tip of Baja, from Istanbul to Portugal. They slept in a Volkswagen bus, stayed wherever they could, and, one excruciatingly hot night in Mexico, even slept out on the Bahía Concepción, balancing on air mattresses to avoid the heat. Their favorite stop was Dubrovnik, Croatia, where they paid an old Yugoslav woman with a big house and little money to make them food every day.
After their return to the U.S., Finch, a math major, worked in construction and later had a consulting business where he managed contractual disputes. Turner, a mechanical engineer, worked for the Fuller O'Brien paint company.
Fifty years later, living part-time in San Francisco and San Diego, the pair is amazed they took the trip and remember it all fondly with a collage on the wall of their Southern California home. They have plans to return to the Bahía in November, this time with their son and grandsons.
Their son, Azan J. Finch, a straight ally, was proud of his dads' anniversary.
"My parents' 50-year marriage is a testament to their unwavering love and commitment to each other," he stated. "They've been incredible role models for me."
Everything in between
And then came everything in between. Over the next 50 years, Finch and Turner would move to San Francisco, participate in Pride parade after Pride parade, adopt a son of their own, and come to love the city where they could be out. Finch still remembers his first San Francisco Pride event in 1976. "I just couldn't believe that gay people were going down the middle of Market Street," he said.
Finch would go on to attend parades in Tijuana — and have rocks thrown at him — Salt Lake City — and tell off a Mormon woman — and act as a parade judge — he still has the T-shirt. The Castro was "where you could hug your partner and not be shamed," he said, and it was a far cry from the world Finch and Turner grew up in, where being gay was impossible. And though San Francisco provided freedom and found family, those in between years were also anything but easy.
The couple officially moved to San Francisco in 1978, shortly after the assassination of gay supervisor Harvey Milk and then-mayor George Moscone. Finch had wanted to participate in the White Night Riots in May 1979 — a series of protests following ex-supervisor Dan White's lenient sentencing for killing his former political colleagues — but Turner was hesitant.
"I would have been there burning police cars," Finch laughed, "but he wouldn't let me leave the house."
Shortly after, in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic ripped through San Francisco, heavily impacting the city's gay population. Amid federal government inaction and stigma that further ostracized the LGBTQ community, the couple lost some of their closest friends, attended far too many memorials and wakes in their 30s and 40s, and spent long days caring for those afflicted by the disease. Suddenly, in the city they loved for its liveliness and liberation, they recalled "[seeing] men walking down the street who looked like skeletons."
And when the couple briefly moved to London in 1991 so Finch could work on the Eurozone project, Turner was only allowed a tourist visa, limiting the couple's ability to even live together. The construction industry was another battle altogether, the pair was unable to be out professionally, and Finch even recalled a Boeing application that asked, "Are you now in, or have you ever had, a homosexual relationship?" (Both men worked at Boeing before they met each other, Finch said.)
And, all that time, they had been "living in sin" — as Finch joked — the couple partnered but not yet married. By the time marriage equality had come around, first in California in 2013 and then nationwide two years later, Finch and Turner had already been together for 40 years and didn't feel a pressing need to wed. But Turner had apparently been "dropping heavy hints," and finally, just about a week ago, Finch popped the question over lunch.
The couple is set to marry Thursday — two days before their 50th anniversary — in San Diego among an intimate group: their two best women, son, and grandsons. "And then we're all going to lunch," said Finch, "[We] don't need all that fanfare."
They do, in fact, already have 50 years together, a family, and a handful of once-in-a-lifetime stories to show for their love. Marriage will only legally certify what has unquestionably been true for a long, long time.
When the B.A.R. mentioned that it was rare to see queer couples together as long as they've been, Finch laughed and said, "Heterosexuals aren't doing a whole lot better."
But there is something undeniably resilient and inspiring about Finch and Turner's relationship. It's not just 50 years of love, but 50 years of love despite systemic homophobia and social ostracism. The secret, Finch said, "You gotta really want it ... and you just gotta never give up." And to the younger queer generation, he advised, "Enjoy your freedoms ... don't let the homophobes stop you from [enjoying] the hell out of your life ... [and] always, always be honest with yourself."
Finch and Turner are optimistic for the future. They've almost made it to 80, and their promise to make it there together, and the progress towards equality continues. In November, California voters will decide Proposition 3, which, if successful, would remove language banning same-sex marriage from the state constitution. The language was added after the passage of Proposition 8 by the state's voters 16 years ago. While Prop 8 was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by federal courts, the homophobic measure's language remains embedded in the state's governing document.
"It's time that we get rid of all that nonsense," said Finch. "Twenty years ago, it was believed that two men or two women couldn't have the same kind of love that a man has for a woman. And that's all bullshit."
Ultimately, Finch and Turner's wedding is the culmination of much more than one article can surmise. It is, in fact, the culmination of 50 years of love, history, and ultimately change.
"When I was [young]," said Finch, "it was so unimaginable that I could do anything other than marry a woman. I just thought, 'My God, if I could just have my own partner, I'd be the happiest man in the world.' And that's kind of proved to be true."
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