Same-sex marriage a threat to secret gay/straight marriages

[hedgehog]

"The most baffling of the ads' warnings is that same-sex marriage will harm straight marriage "lower the dignity of the sacred institution." This strains credibility, given that it's legal for strangers to marry in an Elvis chapel in Las Vegas, and that the divorce rate is 50 percent.

Why have things gotten so nasty? An important but overlooked factor is the "elephant" in the bedroom that few dare to talk about is the phenomenon of the gay/straight marriage.

A lot of closeted gays live as straight, married men, even within conservative Christianity. Several years ago, "Nightline" traveled to a small Southern community to talk to gays and religious conservatives about homosexual rights. A Baptist preacher, in an unguarded moment, revealed that he felt homosexual practices were tempting, just like alcohol or gambling, but that he knew they were wrong. I still recall the horrified look on his wife's face as she heard his comment.


Same-sex marriage threatens gays who are married because it makes public the issue they wish to avoid. These worries, plus the abandonment fears of the straight spouse, are very real, and may contribute to the intensity of controversy."

http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf?/base/opinion-5/124367379125350.xml&coll=1

[BR_Parkway]

1. Amazing how many people miss that link

[hedgehog]

2. For a second, I thought you menat that I had posted a bad link to the article!

My kids were laughing at it, thinking that it was written as satire. I read it and realized the guy was dead serious.

[BR_Parkway]

17. There's more than a few of us openly gay with an ex wife (or more)

in the background. There was an amazing amount of energy spent in those days making sure no one would ever realize our secret desires. And I cringe of the gay jokes and homophobic statements I made during that period of my life - all to make certain no one would realize that "meeting the right woman" didn't change a damn thing about me.

The males I've met who are truly secure in both their masculinity and sexuality aren't bothered by me and my partner in the least. There's no "ick" factor, they are quite comfortable in making jokes and innuendo that their less secure counterparts would never in a million years participate in. And the truly comfortable women who've admitted that, to them, guy on guy action is just as hot as girl on girl is for many straight males.

[Lisa0825]

3. Honestly, I never thought of that!

It's an interesting point. I wonder how many people are in such secret marriages? I wonder how many spouses know or suspect as much?

[Hepburn]

5. IMO, Larry Craig is an outstanding example of a closeted, married gay man.

Yeah, I think the author cited in the OP has hit on something. I don't know how big the number, but I do think that there are more gays in straight marriages than we realize. Especially older gays. I am in my 60s and I can certainly verify that being gay was not accepted at all when young people who are my age were at the usual age of marriage back in the 60s and 70s. So, yes, I can see a marriage of convenience to have some shot at a family life ~~ with the double purpose of concealing being gay.

So sad that people have ever felt it necessary to live like this. What has been forced upon gay persons by society is what is immoral.

JMHO

[hedgehog]

13. I can imagine a lot of men and women 40 and older who didn't even

know there was a name for what they felt back in their youth. I mean that there were people who literally had no idea other people felt the way they did.

[LiberalFighter]

4. So it is better to pretend to be straight in a marriage.

Lead the spouse into believing one is straight. Then later whether by accident or otherwise the spouse finds out their mate is gay embarrass the hell out of them. Because it is just wrong for a gay/lesbian to marry a straight person. When they should marry one of their own. That is if they are gay or lesbian they should marry a gay or lesbian. And if they are straight they should marry a straight opposite person.

What happens to the spouse psychologically who believed they married a straight person? And if there are children? How does it effect them when they believed they were being raised by both straight persons and then all of a sudden they find out otherwise? They get the double whammy. The parent cheating on the other parent and finding out that it is with the same sex instead of the usual way.

These christian wackos want people to live a lie about their gender preferences to keep marriage sacred.

[Hepburn]

6. I think that society in general has put a lot of pressure on gays to hide...

...especially gays who are in my age group ~~ I will soon be 61 years old. Back when I was in my 20s and 30s that would be in the 1960s and 1970s ~~ and that is "marrying age" for most people. If you think that the anti-gay feelings of society are strong now, back then they were 10 times what I see now. Being gay was simply NOT acceptable and it was even considered a mental illness in the DSM.

So, I do believe that many older gay persons intentionally supressed their feelings and entered into marriage because they could not deal with being gay. Maybe they thought they could ignore the feelings, pray them away or that they were mentally ill, like the DSM labeled them, and they wished to conceal any and all of this.

Maybe things are more open in today's society ~~ but back in the 1960s and 1970s, no way. So, I cannot lump all gay people into one category just because he or she is a gay in a straight marriage. Plus, even with straights, there are marriages of convenience ~~ for financial and other reasons. I can see where a straight person and a gay person could be married and it is a marriage of convenience wherein no one is concealing a sexual orientation.

JMHO

[XemaSab]

10. I wonder how many people are not aware that they're gay

Like the Baptist upthread.

I'm not saying this is his deal, but I just have to think there are people out there who just think that feeling sexually tepid towards your opposite-gendered spouse is normal and even desirable for a Good Christian, and most people have to repress secret homosexual feelings. :shrug:

[Hepburn]

11. IMO, you raise a good point.

I am sure that that man has no clue about any of this. How sad.

[hedgehog]

14. OH wow! Not to mention all the men and women who took a vow of celibacy

because they had no attraction to the opposite sex!

[agentS]

7. Finally! The truth comes out!

See, I always knew there was a kind of angle to this whole marriage debate that anti gay-marriage folks are always trying to keep under wraps.

they're gay themselves and they are barely fighting it off.

That's the funny thing about sunlight- it disinfects lies that fester on top of truth.

[AllentownJake]

8. I wish we would do away with the institution all together

I'm a firm supporter of equal rights and as long as we have it, it should be open to people regardless of their sexuality. However, why do we even carry on this archaic institution.

Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russel have been with each other for years have kids seem happy aren't married.

Tim Robbins and Susan Surrandon same thing.

Truth is marriage is an archaic institution. Up to two generations ago, all marriages in my Paternal side of the family were arranged. My grandfather was disowned by his father for not accepting his choice of a wife for him. My grandfather's last name came to America in 1724.

You want to know what traditional marriage is. That is what it is, fathers telling their sons and their daughter who they would marry. Normally to cement some sort of partnerhip between the families. That has existed alot longer than the current form we have.

Why do we set up expensive legal barriers for people who no longer want to be together to get away from each other :shrug:

[hedgehog]

15. SOmewhere recently I heard that if you are born to a married couple in

America, your parents are more likely to split up before you are 18 than if you are born to an unmarried couple in Sweden!

[Terran]

9. I'm not sure this person knows what he's talking about.

As I 50 year old gay man, I do agree that there are a lot of closeted gay men who are married and have kids--especially in small towns like the one I live in. But "most espouse anti-gay views"? Not in my experience, and I've known quite a few men in such positions.

I also don't get this statement: "Some married gays struggle to deny their orientation, while others live secret lives." That doesn't make sense; they're ALL living secret lives, except for the relatively few who went into such an arrangement with both partners aware of the truth. It's not like living a secret life is exclusive from 'struggling to deny their orientation'--some do that and some don't bother, knowing full well what they prefer. The author makes it sound like it has to be one or the other but not both.

In general, I don't agree that legitimizing same-sex marriage is perceived as a threat to such men, except maybe the ones who've been rendered mentally ill and rabidly ant-gay because of their self-denial. These men mostly know what they've done and the fact that men can marry each other isn't going to change their own situations. It's not like all the men who choose to do this are politically right-wing or even live in right-wing areas. I knew men who did this back when I lived in the Bay Area; they weren't political about it in any fucked-up hypocritical way, it was just what they'd done with their lives. I suppose a few of the more callous ones might just say, "Fuck it, I'm out of here, sorry wife", when given the chance to legally marry another man, but again, I see that as very few.

I think what's more to the point about mainstreaming same-sex marriage is that it will, in the very long-term, remove or minimize the dynamic of secrecy that has pervaded gay male interactions for all of modern times. I'm talking about the whole gay subculture of furtive public sex, gay bars, hanky codes, all that stuff that straight people have never needed for the most part. People currently in these 'secret marriages' will probably stay in them at the same rate they have always done; but over the course of, say 50 years, the perceived need for such arrangements will slowly go away wherever same-sex marriage is legal; the widespread need for straight men to engage in illicit sex with gay men in public places will fade; and straight women everywhere will be able to reliably assume that their men don't have any closeted sexual desires, because there won't be any need to closet them.

Just my $.02.

[Mopar151]

16. The views reconcile in your 3rd paragraph

And I can't wait for the 4th paragraph to come true. IMHO, a lot of homophobia is fallout from the "furtive subculture".

[Dulcinea]

12. That wouldn't surprise me.

I don't know a single heterosexual married person who thinks gay marriage is a threat to their relationship. So this paranoia has to be coming from somewhere!

If my daughter's best friend's two moms were to marry each other, I'd send them a bottle of champagne!:party:

[KamaAina]

18. Save the DL!

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: