Study: Gay Mormons in "Mixed Marriages" Likely to Divorce

Yet more cold water has been poured on TLC's ludicrous show, My Husband's Not Gay which aired this past Sunday.  Not only are most of the individuals in the show affiliated with "ex-gay ministries" - i.e., they are "ex-gays for pay" - but new studies indicate that closeted gay Mormons who marry women are 3 times more likely to divorce that are true heterosexual Mormon couples.  For anyone in touch with objective reality, the results should not come as a surprise. Meanwhile, the proponents of the "ex-gay myth" care nothing about the collateral damage done to straight spouses and/or the children of this faux marriages.  The Salt Lake Tribune has details.  Here are highlights:

The LDS couples profiled on TLC’s "My Husband Is Not Gay" may find these statistics sobering: Marriages like theirs — same-sex attracted husbands and straight wives — are two to three times more likely to end in divorce than others.

That finding and others come from a newly released in-depth survey of 1,612 self-selected LGBT/same-sex attracted Mormons and former Mormons, thought by researchers to be the largest study ever conducted with this population.

The study found that:

• Between 51 percent and 69 percent of mixed-orientation Mormon marriages end in divorce, well above the roughly 25 percent of LDS couples who split up.

• More than 70 percent of LGBT/same-sex attracted Mormons leave the LDS Church.

• 80 percent of respondents reported undergoing efforts to change their sexual orientation — 85 percent of which were religious and private efforts, 31 percent were private efforts only, 40 percent therapist-led and 21 percent group efforts.

• 53 percent rejected their religious identity; 37 percent compartmentalized their sexual and religious identities; 6 percent rejected their LGBT identity; 4 percent integrated the two.

Those whose mixed-orientation marriages ended experience "a kind of triple blame by their family and faith communities — first for being gay, then for having ruined the lives of their spouses and children by ... marry[ing] in the service of trying to ‘overcome’ their homosexuality, and then finally for having failed in the marriage and ‘given up,’ " he says. "They want their story to be known and not repeated; they want vindication for their mistreatment." 

The survey also concluded that many more LDS gays try "personal righteousness" efforts — prayer, fasting, church activity, temple worship and strict observance of the LDS health code — as a way to change their orientation than those who seek psychological interventions such as the discredited "reparative therapy."