Limited Partnership

The recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage lends special poignancy to Thomas G. Miller's documentary centering on Richard Adams and Tony Sullivan, who in 1975 became one of the world's first legally married gay couples. Adams, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from the Philippines, met Sullivan, an Australian, in Los Angeles in 1971. Four years later they were granted a marriage license by a county clerk in Boulder, CO, and quickly wed. But when the pair applied to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for Sullivan to be granted a spousal visa to ensure his permanent resident status, the official response famously denied the application on grounds that a marital relationship could not exist between “two faggots.” This initiated a series of legal challenges that left Sullivan in constant danger of deportation and Adams as an increasingly public activist for their cause. Their story is told through interviews, home movies, and archival material, set against the broader context of advances in gay rights. And even though Adams died in 2012 before final disposition of the case that he and Sullivan had begun in 1979, he did live to see the legalization of same-sex marriage in an increasing number of states. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)