The Quiet Desperation of Mixed-Orientation Marriage

At the Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens offers A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage (behind the subscription firewall, alas, as it should be widely read). Stephens writes:

As conservatives debate the subject of gay marriage, maybe they should pause to consider their view about the other kind of gay marriage. You know the one: He works mind-boggling hours and only comes home once his wife is sure to be asleep. He beams at the sight of an old college buddy. Two years into the marriage, she starts murmuring to her closest friend that he just isn’t very interested in her, that way. Five years later he starts acting out in odd ways when he drinks. And he drinks a lot. …

I have a crazy theory; see if you agree. It’s that gay people generally want to lead lives of conventional respectability. So much so, in fact, that many are prepared to suppress their sexual nature to lead such lives. The desire for respectability is commendable; the deception it involves is not. To avoid deception, you can try to change the person’s nature. Good luck with that. Or you can modify a social institution so that gay people can have what the rest of us take for granted: The chance to find love and respectability in the same person. …

[A photo of a gay couple at their wedding shows] a picture of happiness, respectability and pride. Does that look like the end of Western Civilization? Or does it look like the fulfillment of America’s basic promise, the pursuit of happiness, honest, unembarrassed, at nobody else’s expense? Don’t you prefer it to a picture of the other kind of gay marriage—you know, the one of the groom with the faraway gaze, the bride with that look of anxious foreboding?

More. Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics to Richard Rodger’s music, “We’re Gonna Be All Right.” Near the end, the battling pair shift from reflecting about themselves to remarking on troubled couples they know: “Sometimes she drinks in bed. Sometimes he’s homosexual. But why be vicious? They keep it out of sight. Good show, they’re gonna be all right.” Or not.

Furthermore. Similarly, from the Washington Post, My father’s gay marriage:

Gays have always been able to marry. But I fail to see how society is strengthened when they are forced by convention to marry someone whose body is unattractive to them, whose voice isn’t what they want to hear in the morning or whose touch may be as grating as sand in the bed.

But because there are many truths, there’s this rejoinder as well.

OK, still more. I didn’t really intend to “invisibilize” bisexuals and I do believe, to a large extent, in the Kinsey scale. So yes, bisexual men are going to be able to have marriages with women that can’t be characterized as “quiet desperation” even if they sometimes seek sexual relationships with other men. But for gay men (Kinsey 5+) married to women, it’s a different story.

19 Comments for “The Quiet Desperation of Mixed-Orientation Marriage”

  1. posted by Loren on

    So relate to this article. Having been a Mormon that received counsel from Mormon leadership that marriage would make the gay go away, I like, tens of thousands of gays married. It was one of the most abysmal social experiments by the Mormons causing some say a 90%+ divorce rate for these inter-orientation marriages. I remember going to the local bishop days before the marriage confessing to the struggle I was having, being engaged and attracted to men. Clearly the counsel was to proceed with the marriage because living righteously and being married will make the gay go away. We worked and worked, but when the last son left home we were both exhausted with little energy left to continue, we divorced.

    Your thoughts and article are spot on. When the marriage presevationists are saying marriage is open to all including gays as long as gays marry someone of the opposite gender, they have no comprehension of the pain created by that stance i.e., would any knowing father and mother allow their straight son or daughter marry someone gay realizing the probable consequences. No way.

  2. posted by Walker on

    If you don’t have WSJ access, just Google the title (maybe with the author’s name), and you can read it.

  3. posted by Houndentenor on

    This advice wasn’t just given by Mormons. All sorts of fundamentalists counseled young men with same-sex attraction to just marry a “good woman” as if that would make the gay go away. I knew of plenty of rather obviously gay men who did this from my college years and almost every one of them is now divorced and out of the closet. One who isn’t admitted to me recently that he was attracted to me back then (something I didn’t need or want to hear since his wife was my friend in college). It’s a horrible burden to live a lie. The main reason so many of us came out was the sheer exhaustion of pretending to be something we weren’t day in and day out. I had no political agenda in coming out. I was just too tired to keep up the charade. What a relief not to have to censor every word and action. Not to look too long as the hunky jocks pass by. To pretend to notice the hot women. And for what? Who would ask someone to do that? It’s inhumane. Be who you are.

    One quibble. Gay people want to marry for the same reason straight people do. It’s not to surround themselves with the trappings of “normalcy”. It’s because they love each other and have built a life together and it is necessary for such couples to have that arrangement recognized by the law in your worst circumstances (medical emergencies, death of a partner, etc.). most of the time it doesn’t really matter if you are legally married or not. But in those rare occasions, and they happen to everyone eventually, it becomes an even worse nightmare if you denied the status that you have every right to because the law is written to enforce someone else’s bigotry. It’s not right and decent people should easily see that.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      I’m not sure I understand your quibble.

      Yes, gay people want to marry for the same reasons straight people want to marry. And yes, some of those reasons are the desire to surround themselves with the trappings of “normalcy”, the spouse, 2.5 children, golden retriever and white picket fence. Do all gay people have that as a reason? ‘course not. But some do.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        My point was that people want those things, not that they want to be “normal”. Semantics, I guess, but the way it read to me sounded like “they want to look like they’re normal even though they aren’t.”

    • posted by Mike in Houston on

      I had to re-read the article in question because I had the same viceral reaction to the paragraph starting with:

      It’s that gay people generally want to lead lives of conventional respectability.

      When I re-read it, I got that he was trying to make the point that same-sex marriages are conventional and respectable — mixed orientation marriages are typically not.

      The language continues to have some of the trappings of privilege, which is irritating — but overall, this is progress.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        The language continues to have some of the trappings of privilege, which is irritating — but overall, this is progress.

        I wonder. Unlike the situation 40-50 years ago, few millennial gay men are entering mixed-orientation marriages, or even thinking about it, so the “quiet desperation” argument is less germane than it might otherwise be. (Stephens’ age is showing, is my guess.)

        It seems to me that there are cogent reasons for conservatives to support marriage equality (c.f. Rauch, for example), and the “quiet desperation” argument seems to me to be as irrelevant to the current debate as most of the social conservative arguments.

        I don’t see it as persuasive, although it rings true, I suspect, for most gay men over, say, 50. In any event, I don’t have a problem with Stephens making the point, because it is a valid point.

        Maybe Stephens’ take on the question will ring a bell with social conservatives, somehow, in a way that other arguments don’t. I suspect that Mike in Houston is right, though, and that one of the reasons social conservatives to relentlessly oppose marriage equality is because “quiet desperation is precisely what the anti-LGBT crowd wants”.

        If that is the case, Stephens is preaching to the willingly deaf.

        • posted by j.z. on

          Over the past decade I’ve now at least three young men in their early 20s who, while not out to their families, led an active gay life and then, approaching 30, decided to marry women and start families. They know they’re gay and will no doubt dally on the side but they will be straight as far as others are concerned. Are their lives “quiet desperation”? I think there’s a heavy psychological toll. And no, this is not just in the past. Not by a long shot.

  4. posted by Mike in Houston on

    But quiet desperation is precisely what the anti-LGBT crowd wants.

    If you are gay or lesbian, you are expected to live a chaste life or alternatively, we’re told that everyone is equal — there is no discrimination of gays and lesbians because we’re free to marry someone of the opposite sex… which leads to the above.

    Of course, the fact that these “mixed marriages” lead not to happy endings but often to shattered lives in all directions (and the creation of people like Cleta Mitchell).

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    According to the best data I’ve been able to find, about a quarter to a third of gay men my age, particularly in rural areas, married. We did so, for the most part, because when we were young that was the expected course.

    We would make a good population to study if the social conservatives have any interest in learning the likely outcome of their desired strategies.

    I’m glad that times have changed and younger gay men don’t seem to be trying to “deal with it” by marrying with the frequency that we did in the 1950’s and 1960’s .

    While I think that “quiet desperation” is an oversimplification, the fact is that most of the mixed-orientation marriages were problematic for both husband and wife.

  6. posted by Jorge on

    There used to be times when I was bitter that marrying a woman is no longer the respectable thing for me to do. Because I didn’t grow up being taught that marrying a man was.

    If you take the Bible for what it says, it writes of a culture of arranged marriages. Some of these marriages were more about obligation than about romantic affection even after many years. This is a culture that continued for most of the history since the Bible was written, and that still exists in some parts of the world. It is a culture that stands for many virtues.

    For most of this country, that culture is over.

    For people to say that making that kind of vow will make the gay go away is something I take great offense to.

    I am reminded that even in those days, not all gays chose that path and society was perfectly happy pushing them into another closet.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      If you take the Bible at face value then polygamy is okay and so is slavery, genocide and all other manner of things we now know the be wrong. I’m horrified when people tell me that their morality is based on the Bible. I’ve actually read the Bible. That is not my idea of morality. No, thank you.

  7. posted by Don on

    although I agree with the discussion here and the op-ed generally, it doesn’t factor into account why most evangelicals are against gay marriage. it is not a logical argument. it does not call into question gay people’s feelings. those things are irrelevant to evangelicals.

    as biblical literalists, they take the threats against certain behaviors seriously and believe they will have immediate, tangible consequences from God. They see the floods, pillars of salt, promises of hellfire as factual accounts of real-life situations – not parables. Allowing gay marriage is a sin that will bring violent ruin upon them.

    They do not hear us asking for common sense. Pleas for constitutional adherence are meaningless. They see “historical” proof of divine retribution being the direct result of their not doing all they can to stop gay people from marrying each other.

    As many of us think “those poor deluded fools” in believing they will be struck dead or some mass plague will come, they are looking right back and saying to themselves “those poor deluded fools” believe this is no big deal and that the constitution will save them. They are going to kill us all.

    What we are really asking them to do is shift the way they understand the world. To abandon an entire understanding of right/wrong; up/down; good/bad and tell themselves “you know, you’re right. this whole God is watching and judging me and rewarding and punishing me based on my daily actions is complete nonsense. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

    Now not all may be that literal. But most of them are. You can’t convince people using this sort of logic. It’s like arguing the qualifications of a woman for president to someone who believes women are too emotionally unstable to live without the guidance of a male. Really doesn’t matter what you say in your case for her qualifications – by definition, she’s unqualified because of gender.

    Until we understand and engage the audience in terms with which their worldview comports (or abandon trying), this isn’t going to move the needle and inch.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Until we understand and engage the audience in terms with which their worldview comports (or abandon trying), this isn’t going to move the needle and inch.

      Exactly. For all the “more’s” and “furthermore’s”, and discussion back and forth, the discussion is largely irrelevant.

      Nobody reasonable thinks any more that it is a good idea for gay men to marry straight women, and few gay men are doing so in current times.

      The most that can be said for mixed-orientation marriages is that some couples in mixed-orientation marriages find ways to make the marriage “work”, usually because both are committed to each other and to their children. But that doesn’t make them a good idea or a solution to anything.

      Many of us who are older married. For some — most, perhaps — marriage was a life of “quiet desperation” or worse. For others (and I am in this category) it was not.

      I don’t regret a minute of the 29 years I was married. I married for love. I continue to love my former wife, and we remain close. But n0netheless, my sexuality made the marriage more difficult than it otherwise would have been, and I deeply regret that my former wife was deprived the experience of being married to someone who truly desired her sexually. Mixed-orientation marriages, no matter how “good”, are not a good idea, in my opinion, anyway.

      But none of what any of us say about any of this will have any impact whatsoever on the people who still believe, despite all the evidence available to the contrary, that mixed-orientation marriages are the answer. As you say, Don, “You can’t convince people using this sort of logic.

      It is like arguing “born” versus “choice”. With the hard-core social conservatives, nothing is going to change their minds.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      A LOT of them believe just what you said. They are mostly not dumb enough to say those things on national television, but such things are said from pulpits every Sunday. (I’ve heard them with my own ears.)

  8. posted by TomJeffersonIII on

    1. The U.S. Supreme Court did not want to let States legalize pot — even medically. I doubt that has changed, but it should be noted that the issues about legal pot and legal gay marriage are not one and the same. Gay marriage will probably “civilize” gay culture and gay people (i.e. 2.5 kids, white picketed fence, PTA meetings and the like). Legal pot will probably have its share of problems, but will hopefully let us focus more of dangerous criminals and other such violent offenders.

    2. Personally, I have little interest in pot or guns, but I am (reasonably) libertarian about both (although I generally cannot not stand the ‘pro-gun’ lobby such as the NRA). ‘Pot heads’ are not really that fun to be around (popular culture jokes aside) and I am not entirely sure I buy the entire ‘its all a victimless crime’ arguments I hear from some about drug policy (or prostitution for that matter).

    3. My gut instinct is that the court majority will probably NOT come in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide either because they do not support it or do not think that the nation is ready for it or whatever. They will duck that issue (at least for awhile), but I suspect that sympathy for gay couples will be expressed and if states recognize gay marriage, then the court will probably tell the federal government to do so in those states.

  9. posted by Regan DuCasse on

    Whenever you try to have an intelligent conversation with those against marriage equality, they tend to parse words if you say, you want to marry ‘who you love’. Then THEY thrown in if it’s defined EVERYONE you love, whether mom or dad, sibling or golden retriever.
    And yet, in spite of all these debates and conversation, this isn’t just about the GENDER you marry, but marrying someone of the SAME SEXUAL ORIENTATION.
    Mixed orientation marriages, as illustrated above, are rarely successful, and result in shattered lives.
    What’s also true, is that there is another orientation that few considered, but would also be ill advised in a mixed marriage.
    Asexuals.
    Perhaps there was a time, asexuals used to think something was wrong because they felt such indifference to sex and couldn’t relate to it or want it at all. Sex therapists gained a new avenue in which to try to change that situation, if there was as yet no designation for it as an immutable orientation.
    But there is nothing inherently wrong in not wanting sex. When has NOT having sex harm anything?
    However, trying to slut shame those who are NOT asexual into a celibate asexual life isn’t healthy.
    But neither is a marriage in which one spouse, also given the mistaken information they can change the orientation of their spouse, ends up with one of them not wanting sex with the other who DOES want sex.
    Once again, another unnecessarily tragic situation that only can be exploited by ignorance and continued bad information about sexual orientation and what it is and means.
    So it’s only right and sensible to appeal to the fact that sexual orientation, has corresponding components that DO match one another.
    Denying that all but heterosexuality is abnormal has proven to be wrong.
    And also, those religious communities that interfere with this aspect the most should consider the imbalances mixed orientation and bitterness that in could cause in a community. Say you have one with a few more single females to the ratio of eligible bachelors. I think if I were a straight women who’d want to be married, had to compete with lesbians for a husband, and the lesbian was married to a man before I was, I don’t think that would be something that a self respecting straight woman should be happy about.
    The anti gay bigotry sure makes idiots of people. They don’t seem to be able to think this kind of thing through.

  10. posted by Throbert McGee on

    young men in their early 20s who, while not out to their families, led an active gay life and then, approaching 30, decided to marry women and start families. They know they’re gay

    But do their wives know that their husbands are gay?

    I remember reading a blog article some months ago about a thirty-something Mormon husband and wife who decided to “come out” about their mixed-orientation marriage (the husband was the gay one). He had come out to his girlfriend BEFORE the marriage; she decided she was willing to have a gay husband as long as he was sexually faithful to her; and apparently things are still working out after the first decade or so of marriage. But they both stressed that the “informed consent” of the heterosexual partner was indispensible to the success of the marriage — and although they called themselves “devoutly Mormon”, they seemed willing to criticize the LDS church for encouraging closeted gay men to marry “unsuspecting” brides.

    And Evangelical psychologist Warren Throckmorton has discussed his counseling of middle-aged gay people (mostly men) who want to try staying in a mixed-orientation marriage, but he also stresses that it’s crucial for the homosexual spouse to come out to the opposite-sex spouse if this has not already happened.

  11. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Similarly, from the Washington Post, My father’s gay marriage:

    If not for her father’s terrible mistake in entering a heterosexual marriage, the columnist would, of course, not have been around to write the column for the Washington Post

    (Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet makes a somewhat similar point in the conversation between the traditionalist Chinese father and his son’s American boyfriend.)

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