Dating with Dad: A Reluctant Son's 'Assisted Loving'

Fresh Air

Published May 29, 2009 at 1:54 PM EDT

When Bob Morris' widowed father decided to start dating again, guess who found himself sorting through the personals for the right woman?

But all the while Morris was helping his 80-year-old dad find a new partner, he was also looking for his own match — on gay dating Web sites. His book, Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating with My Dad, comes out in paperback on June 2.

Morris is a contributor to the Styles section of The New York Times. His Age of Dissonance column ran for eight years in the Times, and this week he wrote an essay for Salon about being half of one of the 18,000 same-sex couples whose marriages were upheld May 26 in a California Supreme Court ruling that otherwise upheld the state's same-sex marriage ban.

This interview was first broadcast on May 28, 2008.

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