I wrote this...

How important do you think sexual chemistry/compatibility is in a long-term relationship?

Sexual chemistry/compatibility is only as important as sexual exclusivity/satisfaction is. And for the record: Companionate marriage—the union of two individuals who love each other but don't fuck (or don't fuck each other)—can be wonderful.

So I don't necessarily have a problem with this. Josh Weed is devout Mormon and a gay man who married a straight Mormon woman—his pre-school sweetheart—and while his opposite-sex marriage isn't exactly companionate (he fucks his wife! he enjoys it!), the way he and his wife live and experience sexual attraction is different and, he argues, kindasorta superior to marriages that are mucked up by lust and physical chemistry:

If you’re married to a woman, how can you really be gay?

This is a really good question and I can see how people can be confused about it. Some might assume that because I’m married to a woman, I must be bisexual. This would be true if sexual orientation was defined by sexual experience. Heck, if sexual orientation were defined by sexual experience, I would be as straight as the day is long even though I’ve never been turned on by a Victoria’s Secret commercial in my entire life. Sexual orientation is defined by attraction, not by experience. In my case, I am attracted sexually to men. Period. Yet my marriage is wonderful, and Lolly and I have an extremely healthy and robust sex life. How can this be?

The truth is, what people are really asking with the above question is “how can you be gay if your primary sex partner is a girl?” I didn’t fully understand the answer to this question until I was doing research on sexuality in grad school even though I had been happily married for almost five years at that point. I knew that I was gay, and I also knew that sex with my wife was enjoyable. But I didn’t understand how that was happening. Here is the basic reality that I actually think many people could use a lesson in: sex is about more than just visual attraction and lust and it is about more than just passion and infatuation. I won’t get into the boring details of the research here, but basically when sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy. It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love. It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly. It is bodies connecting and souls connecting. It is beautiful and rich and fulfilling and spiritual and amazing. Many people never get to this point in their sex lives because it requires incredible communication, trust, vulnerability, and connection. And Lolly and I have had that from day one, mostly because we weren’t distracted by the powerful chemicals of infatuation and obsession that usually bring a couple together (which dwindle dramatically after the first few years of marriage anyway). So, in a weird way, the circumstances of our marriage allowed us to build a sexual relationship that is based on everything partners should want in their sex-life: intimacy, communication, genuine love and affection. This has resulted in us having a better sex life than most people I personally know. Most of whom are straight. Go fig.

First, what Andrew said:

The point of the gay rights movement is not to make everyone gay; it is to help everyone be themselves, to expand the possibilities of a fulfilling, loved life for more human beings. If that means some gays really want to marry women, and they are not deceiving anyone, it's totally their choice—and their right not to be mocked for it.

Agreed.

But "free to be you and me" is not the lesson anti-gay religious conservatives are going to draw from Josh Weed's case. They will hold Weed up as proof that there's no need for marriage equality or domestic partnerships or civil unions—no need to recognize same-sex couples under the law at all—because all gay people everywhere should follow Josh Weed's example. Society should encourage each of us to find an opposite-sex partner who is willing to marry us and who we can either fuck successfully while thinking about gay sex or whom we feel so strongly about that we 1. actually enjoy fucking or 2. will claim we enjoy fucking in blog posts that our opposite-sex partners help us write. Unicorn Marriages—Weed describes himself as a unicorn—will be pushed as Plan B for gays and lesbians who flunk out of ex-gay ministries.

And this is telling: Weed extols the benefits of marriage for four or five thousand words and asks people not to judge him: "My hope is that other gay people will be as accepting of my choices as they hope others would be of their choices," Weed writes. But Weed never says whether he believes gays and lesbians who make different choices—gays and lesbians who move successfully from infatuation, lust, and obsession to intimacy, love and affection (it can be done!)—should be free to marry their same-sex partners. He never says whether he believes that gay people in same-sex relationships should enjoy the same legal rights and responsibilities, and social recognition, that he and his wife enjoy. (And please note the annoying way Weed's arguments force us to toss the word "choice" around in relationship to sexual orientation.) It's a telling omission.

And, finally, reading Weed's post I kept thinking to myself, "What if Weed had been raised, say, a 'devout Unitarian' instead of 'devout Mormon'? What if he didn't have to choose between the faith to which he was randomly assigned at birth and his hardwired sexual orientation? What would his life look like today?"

Religion, ladies and gentleman. It'll fuck you up. And unlike sexual orientation (in most cases), religion is always a choice. It might be a choice your parents made for you—just as your grandparents made it for them—but it's still a choice.