Why Gloria Steinem married Christian Bale’s father after years of questioning marriage

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Gloria Steinem spent much of her life questioning marriage, once backing out of an engagement because the institution felt restrictive.

So when the pioneering feminist activist married David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale, in 2000 at age 66, the decision raised an obvious question: why did Steinem, who had long challenged traditional marriage, decide to enter one herself?

Steinem later offered a simple explanation for the apparent contradiction. "I didn’t change, marriage changed," she said, pointing to decades of changes in US marriage laws that had altered the rights women could retain within marriage.

Gloria Steinem had questioned marriage for decades

Steinem's hesitation about marriage began long before she met David. During her senior year of college, she backed out of an engagement because marriage "felt like a restriction, not an enlargement."

She later became engaged to filmmaker Robert Benton in her 40s, but that relationship also ended. Her public views on marriage became closely tied to her broader arguments about women's independence and legal rights. 

"We spent thirty years in the United States changing the marriage laws. If I had married when I was supposed to get married, I would have lost my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights," she said. "That’s not true anymore. It’s possible to make an equal marriage."

Why Gloria Steinem married David Bale

Steinem met David, a British businessman and environmentalist, in 1999. They married on September 3, 2000, in Stillwell, Oklahoma, in a small ceremony attended by only four guests.

The wedding itself reflected the couple's approach to marriage. Instead of traditional language referring to them as "husband" and "wife," the ceremony used the word "partners." David later recalled that "there was no use of words like husbands and wives, that kind of nonsense."

"Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner," Steinem said. "It feels limitless, not limited."

Steinem and David remained married until his death in 2003. David died at 62 after being diagnosed with lymphoma, ending a marriage that had lasted only three years.

The relationship also made Steinem part of David's family. David had four children from previous marriages, including Christian, as well as Louise, Sharon and Erin. Christian later recalled being surprised by his father's marriage to Steinem. He was in Germany when the wedding took place and learned about it afterward.

"I don’t think my father thought that anything like this would happen to him at this point in his life," the 'American Psycho' actor said in a 2012 interview.

Gloria Steinem opens up about marriage to David Bale

In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, Steinem reflected on how the relationship affected her outlook.

"His purpose in my life was, as my friends all said, to make me feel deeply, and to live in the present. Because I live in the future," she said.

David's immigration situation was also part of the circumstances surrounding their marriage. He had overstayed his visa, and their marriage allowed him to obtain a green card.

Steinem also recalled how David embraced her public life and the response he received at her speaking engagements.

"We discovered that he liked to travel with me, and after an event [a speech on campus], he would have 500 young women around him, all so relieved to see that you can be a feminist and have a relationship with a man – and he was so excited by it," she said. 

For Steinem, marrying David did not represent a rejection of the views she had expressed for decades. She saw marriage as an institution that had changed, allowing her to enter it without accepting the restrictions that had once shaped her opposition to it.

The marriage lasted only three years, but it became an unexpected chapter in the personal life of one of America's most prominent feminist voices.