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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Ex-Wives of Ex-Gays

posted by on October 10 at 9:22 AM

Truth Wins Out—Stranger contributor Wayne Besen’s organization—has posted some very compelling videos to mark National Coming Out Day. Truth Wins Out battles the ex-gay movement and Besen’s video features interviews with women who married ex-gays.

Says Besen…

[These] survivors warn about the harm done by ex-gay programs that promote marriage as a cure for homosexuality—whether explicitly or implicity. Not only do these marriages almost always fail, but they hurt the innocent spouses and children and treat them as props or collateral damage. While ex-gay organizations, such as Exodus and Focus on the Family, love to show the wedding pictures, they never show you the divorce papers. This video is a powerful reality check and a warning for those who would marry thinking that it will help them go from gay to straight.

Via WayneBesen.com.

RSS icon Comments

1

My best and closest friend, director/playwright Sean McEnaney says it best:

There is no darkness in honesty.

Would that the Dobson's of the world would/could embrace that basic truth.

Posted by Laurence Ballard | October 10, 2007 9:31 AM
2

In Dobson's world, there is no sunshine in homosexuality.

Posted by Mr. Poe | October 10, 2007 9:36 AM
3

This made me think of a book I just bought by a Mormon woman (Carol Lynn Pearson) who married a gay man, ended up divorcing but having a great relationship with him, and she wound up taking care of him while he was dying of AIDS in the 80's. The book she wrote about that experience was called "I Love You, Goodbye," but the book of hers that I just bought is called, "No More Goodbyes" and is written from the perspective of the religious (Mormon) person urging families, friends, and communities to embrace and support the gays in their lives. There's a whole lot of religious stuff in it, but I think it could be a valuable resource for religiously identified people struggling to accept the gay people in their lives. I'm going to give it to my mom so she hopefully stops being a shithead. Heh.

Posted by Carollani | October 10, 2007 9:43 AM
4

There are no gays in America! Not like over there in Iran where they have to execute them right and left!

Posted by Katelyn | October 10, 2007 9:51 AM
5

Thanks for drawing my attention to this video! Great conversation point for future gay-straight alliance meetings in my district's high schools.

Posted by Irena | October 10, 2007 9:56 AM
6

On the converse side, if this is indeed genetically-linked, wouldn't this increase the gay percentage of the gene pool?

Just sayin ...

Posted by Will in Seattle | October 10, 2007 10:10 AM
7

Excellent point Will! I'm going to close my eyes, think of England, screw all the fertile women I can, and produce a bumper crop of little faggot babies. Why didn't I think of that before!

Heh.

Posted by Providence | October 10, 2007 10:21 AM
8

@6:
Why do you think we're still around? How many gays throughout history either were forced or pretended to be straight and thus reproduced? Therefore, the gene(s) was (were) passed.

If Dobson et al. really want to get rid of us, they'll let us come out and marry each other and stop passing so many gay genes into "straight" families.

Posted by torrentprime | October 10, 2007 11:17 AM
9

Very thought provoking video, but I notice all the women in this video say "me and my kids." These husbands, are they abandoning their children in these cases? Is that par for the course in these failed sham marraiges? Straight or gay, that's not cool.

Posted by Bont | October 10, 2007 1:02 PM
10

That's an awesome video, but god...those poor women. Just as gays are programmed to want to be straight, so are some women programmed to want to be Donna Reed, to the point that they revolve their entire lives around their marriages, and have nowhere to go if that doesn't work out.

Posted by Kat | October 10, 2007 1:11 PM
11

It's an important issue and in the news, but I thought that video was horrible. The overbearing emphasis on the women's 'devastation' made them seem so whiney, and the quick cuts made the whole thing very disjointed. I mean, emperically, how much worse is it to find out that your spouse who thought he was gay really is, compared to finding out that your spouse who thought he was straight is really gay? Maybe a bit, but really... the emphasis on devastation and family break up and how they can't trust etc really said more about how women deal with breakups with gay partners, not how women deal with breakups with reformed gay partners. That IMO is the fault of the editors.

I think the video would have been more effective with longer shots (time-wise), a more coherent narrative rather than six minutes of sound bites, and more emphasis on the women's stories rather than just their hurt feelings.

Just saying.

Posted by Natalie | October 10, 2007 1:14 PM
12

@7 - yes, but that's what most gay men used to do. And, to be frank, a lot of women (who tend to be more on a spectrum from gay to straight) do.

Having kids is a biological drive. Wanting to have hot sex is as well. Sometimes they work together - sometimes they don't.

Me, I'm just glad my gender choice is approved by society. Makes it a lot easier.

Never said it was fair.

Posted by Will in Seattle | October 10, 2007 2:07 PM
13

@11: I think part of the point was that there's no such thing as a truly "reformed" gay partner, only gay men in various stages of denial who will, sooner or later, break down and be unable to sustain the lie.

Posted by Pauline | October 10, 2007 2:16 PM
14

I don't get it. You're talking about the ex gay movement and those subsequent marriages, yet these seem to be men who were married for decades then came out.

Not ex gay, got married, then divorced.

Just married, came out, got divorced.

Posted by Lake | October 10, 2007 3:00 PM
15

@6, @7, @8...genetic links don't have to be passed directly. some think that women who are more fertile pass on the 'gay gene'...so chances are we won't go away even if we don't procreate.

Posted by Jiberish | October 10, 2007 4:24 PM
16

Here's a news article on the link between homosexuality and fertility, which might be one of the reasons homosexuality still exists: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/13/wgay13.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/13/ixworld.html

Posted by One of the Marys | October 10, 2007 4:28 PM
17

@15 - good point. It's not a one-to-one gene-protein thing anyway. Biochemical events and triggers affect it, especially stress and diet.

Posted by Will in Seattle | October 10, 2007 4:47 PM
18

I want Wayne Bensen's babies. Mmm. Yes, I'm a guy.

Posted by Grant | October 10, 2007 8:29 PM

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