Straight Spouses - the Other Victims of "Ex-gay" Lies - Advocate for Gay Marriage

On a number of occasions I have commented upon the fact that besides victimizing gays, the professional Christian set and "ex-gays for pay" also victimize straight spouses. These straight individuals might well have avoided marrying gays in the first place but for the lies and false information these "Christians" and "ex-gays" disseminate, thereby causing many gays to marry in the hope that they will be able to change. When one reviews the websites of the ex-gay "ministries," nowhere is mention ever made to straight spouses who may be harmed by marriages that are ultimately doomed to fail. Instead, all one sees is the opposite sex spouse and/or children offered up as "poof" that the gay spouse is "cured." Finally, some straight spouses who have been married to gays are stepping forth and advocating for same sex marriage and increased acceptance of gays in general so that others do not share their fate of a failed marriage. Here are some highlights from 365gay.com:

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Wah Cheong, a lifelong Republican and the soon-to-be divorced father of two teenage boys, sometimes surprises his co-workers and neighbors in a relatively conservative community outside San Francisco when he says he supports same-sex marriage. “Here is my situation,” the 47-year-old chemical engineer tells them when the hot-button topic comes up. “If gays and lesbians were more accepted, I wouldn’t have married a closeted lesbian."

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Of all the constituency groups that advocate allowing gay couples to wed, none is perhaps more counterintuitive than the heterosexual spouses of gay men and lesbians. Yet as the issue plays out in the nation’s courtrooms and statehouses, some of the wives and husbands who learned that their partner was attracted to other women or men are making their voices known in the often-polarized debate.

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“We are the unacknowledged victims of the victims of homophobia,” said Amity Pierce Buxton, the founder of the Straight Spouse Network, a New Jersey-based support and advocacy group with 52 U.S. chapters. “When gays and lesbians feel they have to get married to be accepted and to have kids, that hurts not only gays and lesbians, but straight spouses and kids.”

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To be sure, not all mates who discover they are in what has become known as “mixed-orientation marriages” are so sanguine. Cheong, who was married for more than 17 years when his wife told him she thought she was a lesbian, said he knows other straight spouses who voted for California’s same-sex marriage ban “out of spite for their ex’s, nothing else.” Regardless of where they are on the acceptance scale, each spouse can pinpoint devastating moments of discovery or disclosure that rendered their marital relationships unrecognizable, if not shattered.

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Spires’ ex-wife, Sue Spires, says she regrets having hurt Randy but does not completely understand why, 13 years later, he feels a need to talk about the end of their marriage, which produced two sons. But she agrees with him that if same-sex relationships had been more accepted when they were young, she would have had a relationship with a woman.

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Sadly, the damage done to both gay spouses and straight spouses - not to mention their children - means nothing to the professional Christians who seek money and/or political agendas through the dissemination of the ex-gay myth. Similarly, this damage apparently means nothing to ex-gays for pay either who ultimately care only about themselves and are in my view little better than prostitutes. It is a very sick phenomenon that victimizes both gays and the straights they marry.