Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black, the world’s cutest gay couple, are engaged
Date:
October 1, 2015
The engagement announcement was brief and in the Times of London—the classiest, and most old-fashioned of ways to let the world know.
“The engagement is announced between Tom, son of Robert and Debra Daley of Plymouth, and Lance, son of Jeff Bisch of Philadelphia and Anne Bisch of Lake Providence.”
Tom Daley announces his engagement to partner Dustin Lance Black in the Times newspaper. http://t.co/he7HdWld9O pic.twitter.com/ieike2uFam
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) October 1, 2015
The Olympic diver Tom Daley and his partner, screenwriter and activist Dustin Lance Black—the world’s cutest high-profile gay couple—are engaged to be married, and will decide on a wedding date after the Rio Olympics.
Daley is 21, and Black 41, and at the beginning of their relationship there was much talk of the age difference between them. There was the to-be-expected smattering of mean tweets and bitchy comments.
However, the relationship has continued—they both post endearing pictures of each other on Instagram—and the pair seem very happy.
It was his relationship with Black that Daley was referring to when he came out on December 2, 2013 in a video he made for his fans, which has since garnered almost 12 million views.
In it, Daley talks about a “rollercoaster” couple of years—including losing his much-loved father to cancer, winning an Olympic medal, and doing his ‘A’ levels—and why now, he fells it’s important to be honest about his private life.
Yes, he’s dated girls and still fancies them he says, then “Come spring this year, my life changed, massively, when I met someone—and they make me feel so happy, so safe, and everything just feels great…and well that someone is a guy.”
Since then, the relationship appears to have gone from strength to strength.
In July this year, Daley told The Guardian of being gay: “I guess it has always been in the back of my head, but you never really know. I’d never had feelings for a person along those lines. I’d been in relationships with girls where I’d had sexual feelings, but it became so much more intense when I met Lance. I thought, ‘Whoa, this is weird. Why am I having these feelings for somebody?’ It freaked me a little bit initially, but then it was like, ‘OK, this makes sense’. Lots of things started to make sense.”
His relationship with Black was his first with a guy, and Daley blushed with pride as he spoke to interviewer Simon Hattenstone about Black’s sterling efforts to campaign for equality.
Black himself came to public attention, after winning the Oscar for his script for Milk (2009), which starred Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the San Francisco city supervisor who campaigned so bravely and successfully for gay rights before being assassinated in 1978 (Penn won the Best Actor Oscar that year).
When Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, he gave a brilliant speech in which he said Milk’s story had been “life saving” for him.
He had been 13, he said, when his mother and father had moved from a conservative Mormon home (in San Antonio, Texas) to California, where he first heard Milk’s story.
“It gave me hope to live my life openly as who I am and maybe one day fall in love and get married. I want to thank my mom who loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to.”
Black said that had Milk not been killed, Milk would want him to say to “all gay and lesbian kids out there who are told less than by their governments, churches, and families that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells your God does love you, and very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.”
That prediction might take time to complete its full evolution, but equality before the law is certainly further advanced than it was in 2009—and Black played his role in the campaign for marriage equality, alongside Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign.
His love for Daley, who Black lives with in London, is clear, with Twitter posts about his beloved’s smile…
That smile I love. pic.twitter.com/K1gc24oLbP
— Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) August 2, 2015
…and, just last weekend, a “perfect” picnic in the park.
Twitter was humming with congratulations for Daley and Black, on the announcement of their engagement.
Debbie Daley, Daley’s mother, told the Plymouth Herald: “The whole family is extremely excited and looking forward to the big day. They are going to wait until after the Olympic Games in Rio before they decide on the date of the wedding and where they want to marry.”
As for Daley, he let a picture of the couple waving British flags, prior to tonight’s broadcast of British newspaper Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain awards, say everything.