Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyFebruary 16th, 2008
CNN recently profiled several married couples who remained married after finding out the husband or wife was gay. According to one couple, it takes a special kind of communication between them to make it work:
“He had to learn to talk to me — he had spent so many years not saying what was really on his mind, and not dealing with his true feelings,” says Anna Marie Will, now 39, a worker’s compensation program administrator. “We found out once we got past all that, our marriage was so much better. We still loved each other as people and partners.”
…”When we married, and now still, we feel that we could spend the rest of our lives together,” he says. “We want to be together.”
It’s easy to assume that when either the husband or wife comes out of the closet, authenticity requires that the marriage come to end. But authenticity doesn’t always demand that solution. When it comes to love, it doesn’t have to make any sense at all to anyone else other than that couple. It’s also important to recognize that one couple’s solution won’t work for everyone. In each unique case, the the bottom line is always what’s important to that particular couple. For Anna Marie and Jim, it’s this:
“You can’t help who you love,” Anna Marie Will says. “I can’t imagine sharing a sunrise or sunset, or good day or bad day, with anyone else.
When you find that person, you know that’s it.”
Says her husband: “Your relationship can be different from everyone else’s, and if it works for you in your heart, that’s what you do.”
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Regan DuCasse
February 16th, 2008
Our culture of homophobia is what creates these mixed marriages in the first place. I have a close friend in a marriage like this and before the marriage I said I would support them in whatever decision they made.
And I”m prepared to help in any way I can whatever happens within it.
The point is, gays and lesbians should have the hope and option to marry a person who is also gay. Of course, we should, as a society try and give our support to the decisions that these couples make.
But I have to know what things would really be like if the possibility of legal marriage between gay people would lessen the likelihood of marriage like this in the first place, and divorces or some other unhappy situation.
Very often, those who think that such marriages are a sign that a gay person has changed NEVER know or answer me when I ask them this:
Why would YOU (as a straight man or woman) want to COMPETE with gay people for a spouse? Wouldn’t you feel all kinds of stupid and put out if in fact, they GOT them and KEPT them?
Or worse, LEFT you for someone else who was gay?
Perhaps you should be in support of marriage between gay people for this reason alone.
After all, why should ALL those straight spouses who find themselves in this uncomfortable position, be grateful to those meddling ex gay supporters for it?
Randi Schimnosky
February 16th, 2008
Yes, that’s right Regan. Its all well and good when marriages like these work out, but it would be better in the first place if both had found someone they were sexually attracted to and they didn’t have to deal with just one more obstacle to a happy marriage. If it weren’t for the stigmatization of gays there would be precious few marriages like this and given that many of them end in heartbreak that would be a good thing.
John
February 16th, 2008
I’m for gay marriage and I hope nobody uses me for a closet.
Bob
February 16th, 2008
I was so pleased by this story, because usually stories about mixed-orientation marriages (MOMs)are so negative. I am in a MOM, as a mostly gay man married to a straight woman, out for 6 years now, after 21 years of marriage before that. Life is great. I can’t express how thrilled I am to get to live my life and grow old with the person I love — my wife — and also be myself as a gay man. As one of our kids once observed, it’s silly to expect one person to serve ALL the “partner” roles. I am grateful to have found my soulmate and life partner despite the orientation mismatch, to have found her so loving and flexible as to keep me, and to also be able to have lots of the personal development and fun a gay man deserves. There are zillions of couples like us. Bravo to everyone who has the courage and creativity to construct lives that are right for them, rather than following what others (gay or straight) might set as the rules. [Yes, gay liberation may make MOMs more rare over time, but we do know MOM couples who were NEVER in the closet; they decided to marry with full knowledge, because it was the right thing for THEM!]
Emily K
February 16th, 2008
I fully support MOM couples. Freedom for gays means freedom for all loving human partnerships. EVERYONE should be free to love and commit to the person they choose.
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