In pushing to keep gay conversion therapy legal - increasingly a lost cause - both so they can rake in money and use the "gays can change" lie for political purposes, there is one group that Christofascists consistently ignore: straight spouses of gays who will never be able to change their sexual orientation despite lies to the contrary. While I was never subjected to conversion therapy per se, I fully bought into the Catholic Church's lie that one could "pray away the gay," got married with the best of intentions, and had children. Ultimately, that marriage ended, causing pain and chaos for years. Am I bitter that I believed a lie? You bet I am. But I am even more angry that right wing "Christians" continue to push the lie caring nothing about the harm done to gays, but especially the straight spouses and children of doomed marriages. To these foul people, all that matters is making money through fraud, political messaging and, in some cases, not having to face the reality that their faith construct is built on a lie. A piece in Queerty looks at once family harmed by this pernicious lie. Here are highlights:
There’s more than enough evidence out there to show things like conversion therapy and trying to “pray the gay away” doesn’t work. Yet there are still those who continue to try because faith, they say, is blind.
In a new blog post published on Love What Matters, a woman by the name of Ali Anne details her nine year marriage to a man named Kyle, and how she spent nearly a decade trying to pray his gay away to no avail.
Ali says she knew Kyle was gay before they wed, but she agreed to marry him anyway.
“One day, Kyle had pulled me aside and told me that he ‘struggled’ with homosexuality. My response: ‘Wow, you’re going to need a really strong wife!’ Ali writes.
Both she and Kyle were raised in religious households where they were taught being gay was wrong and, if a person did experience same-sex attraction, they should “either live a celibate life, or, deny yourself and marry someone of the opposite sex and do your best to live a heterosexual lifestyle.”
“Kyle always knew he wanted a family, so living a heterosexual lifestyle was the only option for him–we were both under the assumption we would be able to pray the gay away.”
So Ali and Kyle got married. A few years later, they started having kids.
“Being parents was the highlight of our life,” Ali recalls. “Everything we did, we did with them in mind. Life was busy and beautiful.”
Except not. Because eight years into their marriage, she says, “Kyle began feeling the weight of not being true to himself as a gay man.”
[I]tbecame obvious to both of them that praying the gay away wasn’t working. So they went to a marriage counselor.
“One of the ideas, was for Kyle to ‘come out’ as gay, publicly, while still remaining in our marriage,” Ali writes. “I was hopeful. I liked the idea.”
Kyle, however, didn’t. One evening he told her, “If I am going to be around gay men, I’m going to want to be with a man. This is not just about sex with a man, this is about loving a man and being loved by a man. Ideally, I want to have a relationship with a man.”
That’s when Ali says she knew her marriage was over.
“It has been two years since we made the decision to end our marriage and our lives have drastically changed,” Ali writes. “Through our decision to end our marriage, coming out as gay (Kyle) and becoming an LGBTQ ally (myself) we lost 95% of our friends and family.”
Although Kyle and I don’t choose each other romantically anymore, we still have a deep love and a deep connection with one another,” she continues. “He is my best friend, and I am his. We are committed to our family, as non-traditional as that may look.”
Replicate this story over and over again and one begins to see the harm that this deliberate lie causes. Conversion therapy needs to be banned in every state in America - indeed, across the globe. Sadly, this truth is ignored by the Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church and other denominations.
2 comments:
This was my story, too. 15 years of marriage, two great kids. Ex-wife was best friend, but not my love. Two years of horror trying to make everything fit and everyone happy, and no one was. Since then, years of regrets and self recrimination. But fortunately, things got better. She remarried and is happy. I found the man of my dreams. We have been together 29 years, married for five. I can't regret the marriage in the sense that my kids are my joy, and I now have six terrific grandkids. But there is sorrow for the pain I caused. I hope others never have to go through it. Religion is part of the equation. Societal expectations that are thankfully evaporating in the face of out and proud gays is the other.
Thanks for the comment. Like you, I do not regret my marriage and the children and now 5 grandchildren that were the result. That said, there still was so much pain and anguish. for all of us.
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