Hiding [And Deluding One's Self] Behind The Sacrament

Over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish there has been a running discussion and commentary on the Roman Catholic Church's annulment process which is the Church's somewhat dubious way around granting divorces. Nonetheless, the process does address some issues such as when one spouse is gay/lesbian and foolishly - like was the case with me - believes their religious indoctrination and thinks that if the pray hard enough and get married the same sex attractions (even if not fully admitted as existing) will miraculously disappear. Sadly, it doesn't work that way and if the Roman Catholic Church were honest, it would admit that some people are born LGBT and allow them full church membership as they are - something the ELCA is thankfully attempting to do. One of the posts at Andrew's site struck home with me:

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I understand your skepticism of point 5. To demonstrate why such a vague description might be important, let me offer you the story of my parents' annulment. My mother and father married in good faith, mostly. I say "mostly" because "good faith" on my mother's end meant that she thought God's blessing on her marriage would end her attraction to women. It did not.

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It's sort of a dramatic case, but I think it's illustrative: a lot of people put a great deal of faith in the sacrament of marriage to cure woes it actually cannot. My mother thought, mistakenly, that marriage would end her conflict about her sexuality by magically making her straight.

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I am pleased to report that coming out of the closet actually cured most of her conflict about her sexuality -- by allowing her to accept who she was. Although "Lack of appreciation of the full implications of marriage" is vague enough to include, say, not understanding that marriage is forever, I think the clause is there more for people like my mom, whether it's because they're gay or for another reason.

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Many straight spouses mistakenly believe that their gay spouse deliberately sought to fool them and entered into marriage in bad faith - mine certainly seems to believe so - when in reality that not the case whatsoever. Both the straight spouse and the gay spouse are, in my view, victims of a religious belief system that ignores reality and modern knowledge on sexual orientation. Tragically, all concerned suffer harm even though neither spouse sought to do anything other than what they believed was expected and required by God. The sooner the antiquated and false religious concept of condemning homosexuality is thrown in the trash bin of history, the better off countless LGBT and straight individuals will be.