In a society that normalizes and accepts queer people and their lifestyle choices, queer people won’t feel pressured to try and pass as straight by marrying heterosexual people out of duty or obligation. Fewer gay people trying to make a mixed-orientation marriage work means fewer divorces, fewer heartbreaks, and stronger heterosexual marriages.
More and more, stories of mixed-orientation marriages are being told, and a large percentage of them end in divorce, heartbreak, and broken homes.
Many of the queer people who married someone they were not sexually attracted to did so out of faith and a desire to do the right thing. The Latter Gay Stories podcast tells a wide variety of stories, and I encourage you to listen to several, especially if you don’t know a queer person in real life well enough to talk to them about the choices they’ve made and why. Some told their future spouses about their same-sex attraction before they were married, or that they believed they were transgender; some did not. Some were so deeply closeted that they didn’t know they were queer. Those raised in faithful LDS homes believed that acting straight was the only righteous choice. God would bless and strengthen them, perhaps ‘cure’ them and they would become heterosexual.
That’s not how sexual orientation works. Someone who is bisexual or pansexual may be fine in a heterosexual marriage. Someone who merely wishes they were bi or pan is eventually going to cause a lot of pain to their spouse. Many get divorced. Some may stay married. The stories about the marriages that are still together are not frequently told. Is the gay spouse having a gay affair? Does the straight spouse know?
Are the two spouses just roommates?
Kids absorb the emotional patterns of their parents marriages and tend to repeat them. Even if a queer person stays faithfully in a straight marriage for the sake of the kids, the kids are going to feel it. On one of my (very few) dates after I got divorced, I went out with a man who had divorced his lesbian wife. She hadn’t known she was a lesbian when she married him. He told me a little bit about how it felt to be married to someone who was not sexually attracted to him at all, and the impact that had on his self-image and self-esteem. Then he said his parents marriage was the same way and he swore he wouldn’t have a marriage like his parents. Then he shrugged and gave that broken little laugh you do when you don’t want to cry.
Someone like me shouldn’t be dating straight men. Furthermore, I shouldn’t feel any pressure from society to date/marry a straight man. The only way to guarantee that someone like me (I’m asexual ) doesn’t marry a straight man and break his heart is to make it normal and accepted for a woman to say that she doesn’t want to be married to a man, and have that be just fine. A large part of the reason that I married a man I wasn’t attracted to is because I wanted to be obedient to what I’d been taught, fit in to my faith community, and feel like I belonged. I thought the attraction would develop if I prayed enough. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know.
Let people live as the people they really are, and marriages won’t end because one partner is queer but tried to be in a straight marriage and failed.
Conservatives benefit from normalizing and accepting queer people. If it isn’t risky and stigmatized to admit you’re queer, then queer people won’t try and deny their own attractions, sexuality, and gender by marrying someone they are not attracted to. Heterosexual marriages are stronger if both spouses really are heterosexual.
Questions:
- Would you try to have sex with someone you aren’t attracted to if you believed God wanted you to? For how many years/decades?
- It’s been 10 years since gay marriage was legalized nationwide. None of the prophesied harm to straight marriage has materialized. Do you still hear people say that gay marriage causes harm? Has this issue largely been settled?
Happy Pride Month, everyone!
Wheat & Tares 
I support “queer rights”. However, I don’t support a lot of the excesses that seem to be wrapped up with the LGBTQIA+ (or whatever letter combination they are using now) movements. Let me explain, and provide examples.
I’ve worked with people of all manner of sexualities. I have no issue with it at all. One of my friends in my current workplace is a gay man who has been with his husband for 40 years. They just bought their first house last week, and I’m happily building a special woodworking project for them (a set of wind chimes) to celebrate that. I’m happy for them, and more than willing to celebrate their family’s milestones.
On the other hand, two years ago, there was a noteworthy incident in a local elementary school where LGBTQIA+ activists from Planned Parenthood’s Teen Council gave an unapproved sex ed lesson to 4th and 5th graders at Lincoln Elementary School in Olympia, Washington. The lesson included everything from advocating puberty blockers and showing pubic hair shaped like cats and hearts, to teaching kids to choose their own pronouns. Instead of using the approved, science-based curriculum, the teacher brought in someone who was unqualified and presented a highly biased and advocacy-based lesson that was not appropriate for the age group. According to those advocates though, that’s just part of “queer rights”. To me, and many others, that’s an excess.
I also have issues with many PRIDE events. Again, they seem designed to glorify excesses, rather than merely focus on equal rights. I don’t need to see, and more importantly my children don’t need to see, people dancing down the street in BDSM gear like I have personally seen at events in the Seattle area. And it seems like every year it’s a race to see if they can make it more extreme than the year before. (Of course, note that I live in the Seattle area, which is a city that tends to have more extreme PRIDE events, so your mileage may vary in other cities.)
I don’t have an issue with equal rights, but I have an issue with in-your-face excess, or trying to shove it onto my or other people’s children. I’ll treat you equally no matter who you are or who you love, whether you identify as a man or a woman. (I will draw the line at someone identifying as an animal. Again, excesses.) But I don’t go out of my way to rub what I do in the bedroom in anyone’s face, and I politely ask that others treat me with the same respect.
1. Nope. But a younger, more “faithful” version of me would’ve done, and that honestly frightens me.
2. None of the things they predict seem to happen, do they? But look, you can point to any societal problem and say, “The gays did it,” if you’re bigoted enough, and plenty of our co-congregants are. I could even give specific examples heard with my own ears, but they’re depressing.
I didn’t realize how completely asexual I am until after my ex-wife and I divorced. My lack of interest in physical intimacy caused a lot of stress both as a couple and for me personally (and for her, but I can only detail my own experiences). The shame and bitterness at failing as a husband is something I’m still working on.
If different sexualities were accepted and we were taught how and encouraged to be who we actually are, and given affirmation that who we are is enough, I think much pain could be avoided. It’s a lovely thought that isn’t all that realistic. Now, like Janey, I don’t want put someone else through being married to me when they need more than I can provide.
1. No. Not after my experiences.
2. I don’t know that it’s settled, because people will always come up with reasons for justifying their intolerance.
Observer- I had one thought while reading your comments. The LGBTQIA+ folks don’t have the market cornered on excess and “in your face-ness.” One glaring example is the current U.S. president throwing himself a military parade for his birthday that will cost in the millions of dollars. And as for Pride Parade issues, most routes/locations are reserved well in advance. If you don’t have to be in that part of the city, maybe don’t head that direction? That’s generally worked for me.
Nope. God Bless all of our Veterans during the month of June! I will no longer follow the “road to madness” with the LBGTQIA. It’s all gone to far. I’m done.
Adam C. It’s a bit difficult to avoid when they schedule protests or other events practically next door to my office. You can’t always avoid such things.
Observer – are you equally upset with heterosexual excesses? I’ve heard that the most popular religious denominations in the USA actually teach that LGBT+ people will burn in hell if they have gay sex. Can you imagine being a kid and getting exposed to that sort of extremist heterosexual rhetoric. Some of those poor kids get suicidal in response to that sort of extremism! I’ve heard a lot of heterosexuals blame LGBT+ people for the downfall of Western civilization! This is an excess that I simply can’t support.
Some people are so ‘excessive’ and ‘in your face’ about heterosexuality that they actually murder gays, or say ‘they deserve it’ when they hear about someone murdering someone else for being queer. Yes, that actually happens. The most recent murder in the news is Jonathan Joss, if you want to take a look.
I dunno, man. I can understand how your examples are annoying. But do you see the heterosexual excesses of demonizing gays, telling them they’ll burn in hell, blaming them for everything wrong with society, and shrugging when they get murdered — do you see how those are a bit MORE excessive than the examples you’ve given?
Observer
What I don’t like is all that excess hetrosexuality (or whatever those people are calling themselves) being paraded around in my face. It’s so pervasive, I can’t get away from it. And because it’s 24/7, it become normalized. I am constantly having Society rubbing heterosexuality in my face. My face is coated. It’s not just shoved on me, it’s super-glued.
Why does respect only go one way? I feel I should quote Alfred P Doolittle on middle class morality, but will settle for this. ” I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.”
Yes, I am opposed to heterosexual excesses as well. When I said “I don’t go out of my way to rub what I do in the bedroom in anyone’s face, and I politely ask that others treat me with the same respect.” that didn’t mean “I politely ask that [only LGBTQIA+] treat me with the same respect.”. It meant exactly what I said. I politely ask that others – as in everyone else – treat me with the same respect.
But the topic of this post wasn’t heterosexual excesses, it was queer rights. I commented to state that I support equal rights for LGBTQIA+, but I am opposed to excesses and gave examples of the sort of excesses I was talking about. I generally have a “You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, and we can all get along” attitude about most issues, and this one is no different.
Observer – and yet, on this post about the right to marry, and the difficulties of being in a mixed orientation marriage, you couldn’t just state your support for queer rights and end it there. No, we had to hear about how it is such a trial for you that, for two hours once a year, you can’t look out your office window without risking seeing the pride parade and maybe some gay people doing dance moves while dressed in BDSM gear. I am truly sorry for your suffering. Maybe, if you don’t want everyone clapping back at you about heterosexual excesses, don’t act like you’re being burdened by gay people existing in public. One parade. Once a year. On a predetermined route for which the city gave a permit. This isn’t an ‘excess’ that you have to hold up so we can all admire your fortitude and pity the severe imposition on your life.
That other story you told is clearly just propaganda and falsehoods. You can avoid seeing alleged LGBT+ excesses by not watching homophobic news sources. The rightwing media spends a lot of time trying to stir up outrage. Looks like you got suckered. If you want some tips on how to identify disinformation, let me know and I can help.
Anyway. Back to the post. Queer rights, and learning to coexist happily and peacefully, benefits heterosexual people and conservatives. Live and let live.
Observer,
LGBTQ people and their families want to be left alone, yes. But just like most people we don’t just want to be tolerated. We would like to accepted for who we are and included in our community. This is a normal human need that has been denied to us.
MEN, who think they are speaking for God, have been telling us who/what God is for millennia: through scripture & preaching. Is God a Father? Is God a Mother? Or both in one perhaps? If God exists, they have to be much more than a binary heterosexual identity. They have to be so much more!! That feels truly right to me. IF we are all children of God, it has to be so.
A close friend is in a mixed orientation married and has told me in depth about his challenges. It’s heartbreaking- he’s staying married for his kids and to keep his covenants. He said he knew he was gay but was promised by his mission president that the atonement can heal anything, including being gay. He still believes it.
I also have a family member who divorced after discovering he was gay and tried to cure himself through the atonement. It didn’t work and left a trail of devastation that will likely never completely heal.
There’s no way that this culture of mixed orientation marriages is better for families that embracing their true selves.
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
― Harvey Milk
Hmmm. Three votes for assassination and closets. Interesting.
vajra2, as a non-Mormon I wondered today why Mormons don’t attend churches like the rest of Christians do. Mormons meet in wards, a term for voting districts from the days of Tammany. From the days of Joseph Smith running for President in 1844. It’s all about the votes. It has nothing to do with Book of Acts Restorationism and everything to do with 19th Century American politics.
Maybe that’s why every post here has to do with politics. It’s how Mormonism operates as a theocracy.
If a society allows queer people to live as their true selves, marry whom they love, and raise children if they so choose, what possible downsides are there? It’s humans forming families, which is a net benefit to communities and society at large. You shouldn’t claim to be “pro-family” if your aim is to force others to live within a very narrow definition of the word.
Additionally, when we allow the word “family” to be defined more broadly, we also make life easier for other non-traditional family arrangements that exist both inside and outside conservative religious communities (single parent, blended, foster, etc) who are often just trying to get by without being stigmatized.
6 votes for assassination and closets. Why am I not surprised?
Moderator can you delete Ambrose post please?
Harvey Milk was a gay City Supervisor in San Francisco, who along with Mayor George Moscone, were assassinated because a former police officer, Dan White, also elected Supervisor, decided that 5 bullets to the bodies of each of them, including two coups de grace to their heads would make up for his political ineptitude. Despite efforts by Diane Feinstein, and others to mentor him, he resigned in the face of his complete inability to use the levers of power. Then he changed his mind and wanted to be reinstated. When this did not happen, he murdered them. White was an open homophobe.
These assassinations, occurring as they did at a time the ravages of HIV/Aids was also being felt, proved a rallying cry for the Gay community. At that time, unless there were testamentary dispositions, immediate family members could control such things as whether a gay partner could even visit his/her partner in the hospital. The LGBTQA+ community did have an “agenda”: to be treated as equal human beings with the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens of a democratic republic.
30 years later Mormons were still trying to deprive that community of the right to marry. Mormons were not alone in this; many other religions supported Prop 8. But the “we don’t get involved in politics” Mormons bankrolled much of the campaign and turned out large numbers of volunteers.
Last week the actor Jonathan Joss was murdered in front of his husband by a man hurling homophobic slurs.
We know, of course, how sacred Mormons hold the marriage of one man and a woman, and another woman, and another woman. So sacred that the current President is bound to one woman…and another.