Will the Spread of Gay Marriage Reduce "Mixed" Marriages With Straights?

One of the major points of disgust I have with the bogus "ex-gay" agenda pushed by Christianist organizations and so-called reparative therapy "ministries" is that they do not seem to give a tinkers damn about the straight spouses that knowingly or unknowingly find themselves married to a closeted gay or lesbian. The agenda is all about "changing" the gay or lesbian spouse straight and the favorite proof of the "ex-gay" conversion is marriage to an opposite sex spouse. The collateral damage that is almost guaranteed to flow to the straight spouse and any children of the marriage when it ends means nothing to the likes of the folks at Exodus International.
*
Also missing from the mix is any concern that the straight spouse marrying an "ex-gay" has been cheated out of having a marriage to someone who is heterosexual even if the closeted LGBT spouse remains faithful and remains in the marriage. No, sadly, the political agenda of the Christianists to be able to parade "ex-gays" before the public, legislators and judges in their quest to denigrate and marginalize LGBT rights trumps all else. It's disgusting and, to me, demonstrates the utter moral bankruptcy of ex-gay proponents. People like, it appears, Marcus Bachmann, the husband of the seriously untethered Michele Bachmann.. A column in Huffington Post looks at how the spread of gay marriage may reduce these unfortunate marriages. Here are highlights:
*
Whether straight men and women know it or not, New York's new Gay Marriage Act will have an enormous impact on them. The reason? It will eliminate or at least drastically reduce the likelihood of gays attempting to conceal or even change their orientation through heterosexual marriage.
*
In the past, . . . . most lesbians and gay men married opposite-gender spouses and tried as best they could to fit into the heterosexual mould their society expected, not infrequently indulging in clandestine gay liaisons.
*
These are the marriages that the Gay Marriage Act will mostly end. And some of its most fervent supporters have been the heterosexual spouses of closeted homosexuals. These gay husbands and their wives and ex-wives, and lesbian wives and their husbands and ex-husbands number in the millions, and number in the millions -- between 1.7 and 3.4 million -- and are increasingly speaking out about how their experience has affected them personally.
*
The Straight Spouse Network, for instance, use a virtual community "for all the millions of us who find that we are married or in a long term relationship with someone who we find out is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or just not sure about that." Television's Fran Drescher's show Happily Divorced is inspired by her real-life experience as a straight woman whose husband reveals, post-divorce, that he is gay.
*
But the right to gay marriage will reduce but not eliminate these marriages; only eradicating homophobia will do that. There remains a chasm between official policy and the realities of personal and social life: parental rejection, social ostracism or mockery, and physical danger that includes being bashed as a "fag." Coming out can still be perilous, and many young gays prefer the safety of being closeted.
*
For the first time in history, young people are growing up in the presence of legally sanctioned gay marriage (and divorce), an experience that will influence how they shape their lives in a world that is marching away from homophobia and allowing gays and lesbians to unite in marriage, to raise their children, and to expect to receive the same rights and to be subject to the same obligations as heterosexual spouses. As more gay men and women decide to marry, they will shore up the very institution whose decline the wider society mourns.