S U N S T O N E
CLEAN-SHAVEN:
NO MORE BEARDS
Straight Women, Gay Men,
and Mormonism
by Holly Welker
HOLLY WELKER is working on a memoir about
her friendships and relationships with gay men.
AUTHOR NOTE: At the 2005 Sunstone
Symposium, I attended several panels on homosexual
issues and noticed that not only was
the predominant focus of such panels male sexuality,
most participants were male. In one case, “Steps in the Right
Direction? Evaluating New LDS Publications on Homosexuality,”
they were exclusively male, though not exclusively gay. Just as when
I read the Book of Mormon or surveyed the artwork in any LDS visitor’s
center, I found myself wondering, Where are the women? More
specifically, where are the lesbians, where are the wives, ex-wives,
ex-fiancees of gay men? There were plenty such women among my
acquaintances, but we weren’t discussing homosexuality, at least not
at Sunstone in 2005. No one asked us, and we didn’t volunteer. Why
not?
In an attempt to begin addressing the imbalance I saw in 2005, I
organized a panel the following year: “Will, Grace, and Angels in
Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men, and Mormonism.”
This essay is based on my presentation at that panel.
EXCLUSION OF WOMEN AND THEIR CONCERNS
from weighty discussions of weighty matters is not a
new thing. It’s been twenty-five years since I first read
Plato’s Symposium, but I remember the discussion in my
Western civilization class of Athenian society, its marriage laws
and customs: all citizens (who were exclusively male—women
could not be citizens) were expected to marry and sire children,
preferably sons. In this discussion in 1982, we talked
frankly about the flirtation between Socrates and Alcibiades,
and considered what it meant for a homosocial, homosexual,
patriarchal, misogynist society to require men to marry
women and impregnate them as part of their duties as members
of the community.
If marrying a woman and fathering children aren’t quite as
obligatory for good male citizens today as they were in the
time of Plato and Socrates, there are still those who argue that
these practices should remain rights all men, gay or straight,
are entitled to. On 3 August 2006, the New York Times ran an
article entitled “When the Beard Is Too Painful to Remove,”
which noted that “for gay men in heterosexual marriages, even
after the status quo becomes unbearable, the pull of domestic
life remains powerful. Many are desperate to preserve their
marriages—to continue reaping the emotional and financial
support of wives, and domestic pleasures like tucking children
in at night” (emphasis added), benefits they hope to retain “either
by lying, promising their wives they will not have sex with
men or persuading [the wives] to accept their double lives.”1
An example of the middle category, promising fidelity to a
wife, is provided by Ben Christensen’s essay “Getting Out,”
from the Fall 2005 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought. In his essay, Christensen, a gay man who, in his early
twenties, married a straight woman and fathered children by
her, argues that
The whole point of the civil rights and women’s liberation
movements was to allow blacks, women, and
other minorities to break free of what had been their
traditional roles. We live in a world where it’s okay for
blacks to do what was once considered “white” and
for women to do what was once considered “male”—
get an education, have a career, etc. Why then is it not
politically correct for a gay man to venture into what
is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight
men—to marry a woman and have a family—if that’s
what he chooses to do?2
This is a troubling passage, for many reasons. It is simply
not true that “the whole point of the civil rights and women’s
liberation movement was to allow blacks, women, and other
minorities to break free of what had been their traditional
roles.” A major goal of the U.S. civil rights movement in the
1960s (itself merely a more recent episode in a long struggle
for equality and human rights in the U.S. that includes the
abolitionist movement of the 1800s) was to pass and enforce
legislation that would remove the threat of violence racial minorities
so often lived under. It was not simply about securing
a genuine opportunity to vote or go to school or keeping a seat
on the bus; it was about living without fear of lynchings,
bombings, beatings, and murders. The same goes for the feminist
movement: there has been a long struggle to compel lawmakers
and law enforcement agencies to treat sexual and domestic
violence as the crimes they should be, and to give
women such originally rare privileges as the right to retain
property and a legal identity after marriage or to sue an abusive
husband for divorce. And let’s not forget the role that the threat
of violence has played in the gay rights movement: it’s not all
about securing insurance for your same-sex partner or the
right to adopt; it’s also about living without the threat of being
thrown in prison and sentenced to hard labor for the crime of
sodomy like Oscar Wilde, or stabbed to death like Sakia
Gunn,3
or tied to a fence and left to die like Matthew Shepard.
Although Christensen claims that “We live in a world where
it’s okay for blacks to do what was once considered ‘white’ and
for women to do what was once considered ‘male,’” the virtual
enslavement of women is still a stark reality in too many parts
of the world. It would be more accurate to write that we live in
a society where some people think “it’s okay for blacks to do
what was once considered ‘white’ and for women to do what
was once considered ‘male,’” but it’s important to note that the
only examples cited by Christensen of “white,” “male” activities
previously closed but now open to women and racial miPAGE
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norities are the basic human rights of getting an education and
seeking rewarding employment. Furthermore, the fact that it
might be “okay” for racial and gender minorities to pursue the
same goals as white men does not mean they have as many opportunities
to do so or receive the same rewards for their ef-
forts.
But the biggest problem with Christensen’s equating his situation
with the struggles of the civil rights or women’s movements
is that Christensen already has the right he demands: to
marry a woman and father children by her. Indeed, he and
other gay men have, by and large, always had that right in
Western civilization.
Although Christensen’s essay attempts to co-opt progressive
discourse and ideology, as in his reference to the civil rights
and feminist movements, his stance is actually profoundly
conservative. As I’ve noted, the movements he invokes involve
long struggles for a wide range of legislation. Christensen
makes no mention of legislation in his essay, because what he’s
arguing for is not a change in but a more emphatic embrace of
a status quo society has only begun to move away from. We
should remember that until recently, gay Mormon men were
encouraged to marry women—the sooner, the better.
Christensen demands not only the continued right of gay men
to marry straight women, but approbation and approval for
doing so, and he has received even that.4
As it happens, I am strongly in favor of legislation opening
what has been the exclusive territory of straight men—to
marry a woman and have a family—to gay women. But in his
Dialogue essay at least, Christensen exhibits little regard for the
opportunities and rights of women, gay or straight: his concern
is with preserving the status quo with regards to the privileges
of men, straight or gay. And because neither he, nor the
editors of Dialogue, nor the respondents to his essay, nor a
great many others, seem to acknowledge this, the original
question I raised regarding the ancient Greek view of male
“duties” remains a vital one, though with a slight twist: What
does it mean for a homophobic, patriarchal, misogynist society
to require men to marry women and impregnate them as part
of their duties as members of the community?
Why should a devoutly Mormon gay man care at all about
women’s sexuality, given how little attention it receives in
Mormon doctrine? Female biology is extremely important in
Mormon ideology, of course, as that is what allows women to
bear children, and children are central to the Mormon emphasis
on the family. But reproduction is only one part of sexuality—after
all, one can be a sexual being without ever reproducing.
Sexuality also includes physiological states such as
arousal, desire, and pleasure, as well as the impact the entire
mix has on the psyche or soul. How is that treated in Mormon
ideology? I’m not saying there’s no room for a nuanced consideration
of female sexuality in Mormon thought and experience;
I am saying that what is enshrined as scripture thus far
reduces the importance of female desire and satisfaction.
Think of Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants,
wherein marriage is presented as a pragmatic matter of reproduction,
in which “virgins” are given unto a man “to multiply
and replenish the earth” (verse 63). Within that construct, the
emphasis is primarily on male morality and female purity, in
that “if any man [note the lack of attention to his sexual status]
espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first
give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are
virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified;
he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he
cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to
no one else” (verse 61, emphases added). Obedient submission
to this law is named a condition of celestial exaltation.
Therefore a man may (should?) espouse as many virgins as he
desires. But what mention is made, in the entire section, of female
desire? Even the stereotypical emotional (as opposed to
physical) desire a woman might have for monogamy, for the
exclusive regard and fidelity of her husband, is essentially unrighteous
here, and women who refuse to be one of several
wives are, in effect, consigning themselves to lesser realms in
the hereafter.
There’s also the fact that regardless of how God the Father
thinks of his daughters, no matter how exalted and honorable
women’s roles in the plan of salvation, in the verse I’ve just
quoted, the limitations of language reduce women in their
marriages to “that that belongeth unto [one man] and no one
else”—they’re not even “those who belongeth,” pronouns
more appropriate for human beings. Grammatical niceties
aside, the general situation would not have seemed striking or
strange in 1843, the year this section is dated; wives at that
time were indeed, as a matter of civil law, the property of their
husbands. But how does this rhetoric used to explain
polygamy to the early members of the Church still affect the
way Latter-day Saints think even of the monogamous marriages
they are expected to enter into now?
OF COURSE, IT’S not as if American culture at large is
particularly concerned with women’s sexuality—unless
it’s used in the service of men’s pleasure.
Consider the Salon article “Live Girl-on-Girl Action!” which
discusses straight high school and college girls who make out
with other straight women at parties. These girls are “firmly
straight, they say, but they’ll kiss their friends as a performance
for guys—either for material gain, like free entry or alcohol, or
to advertise that they’re sexually open and adventurous.”5
Deborah Tolman, director of San Francisco State University’s
Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality, tells the author
of the article that
In the case of females who get it on solely for male enjoyment,
it’s not at all about experimenting with females.
. . . “The motivations aren’t about your own
desires, they’re about getting guys excited and
looking hot. It’s ironic because they’re engaging in
sexual behavior, which is supposed to look like it’s
about sexual desire. The crucial part of that is that
they make sure no one thinks they’re actually les-
bians.”
The article goes on to quote Pamela Paul, author of
Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our
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Relationships, and Our Families, who states that girls
aren’t kissing other girls because they want to. They’re
doing it because they want to appeal to boys their age.
And for boys their age who’ve developed sexually
alongside Internet porn, their sexual cues are affected
by the norms and standards of porn. And that’s girlon-girl
action.
And when girls fail to get what they want out of this situation—specifically,
a boyfriend—it’s their fault, not the boys’,
because although the girls are doing what the boys like and request,
they’re not meeting the boys’ ideal: boys interviewed for
the article acknowledge that they would be happy to “hook
up,” or have casual sex with girls who kiss other girls, but they
wouldn’t want them as girlfriends. (Though how a man finds
and courts a girlfriend when he’s busy bedding random
women has always been something I fail to understand.)
The same appears to be true for marriages between gay men
and straight women: when women fail to get what they want
out of the situation—a faithful, loving husband who will
cherish them—they are still blamed. For instance, in Steven
Fales’s one-man, autobiographical play Confessions of a Mormon
Boy, Fales relates how he married and was unfaithful to his female
best friend, and how he handled the prospect of divorce
when, after six years of marriage, his “same sex attraction” finally
put too great a strain on the marriage:
I turned it all on [my wife]. It was her fault! She never
wore lingerie! She wouldn’t watch the better-sex
videos I ordered from the back of GQ. [She] knew
going into this marriage it might come to this. And
now that I’ve finally cracked, she’s going to just throw
me out?! How dare she watch Will & Grace and laugh
when I was trying to change! She had failed me!6
In a move straight out of Genesis, Fales abdicates responsibility
for his own actions, and blames the woman: she failed to
beguile me, and I did seek other fruit. Fales eventually acknowledges
that of course his wife was not responsible for his
homosexuality or the failure of their marriage. But that didn’t
stop him from blaming her for it in the first place.
Yet even when women are not blamed, their suffering and
unhappiness often go unrecognized or undervalued. In commentary
accompanying Ben Christensen’s essay in Dialogue,
Ron Schow quotes a Mormon man who spent eight years in a
temple marriage:
It was only after I came out to my wife that I realized
how much she had suffered and endured over the
years in asking questions like why didn’t I find her
desirable or why our sexual relationship never
seemed satisfying. Was it a failure on her part? she
wondered. She had sadness about feeling alone, confused
and hurt in ways that were nearly impossible to
articulate.7
Separating from a spouse or partner is never easy or painless,
even when you know it’s time to end a relationship you’re
unhappy in; as for determining custody of children, I can only
imagine from watching loved ones go through it how harrowing
and heartbreaking it must be. Furthermore, the trauma
inherent in the breakup of a Mormon marriage is often compounded
when it involves an issue requiring or precipitating a
devout member’s reevaluation of his or her relationship to the
Church. Coming out of the closet can be traumatic and lonely
enough in and of itself, even if you haven’t grown up being
told acting on same-sex desires can damn you; add the solitary
agony of envisioning yourself in hell because you want what
you’re told you shouldn’t want, or admitting to yourself that
one of the primary institutions you’ve based your life on is not,
after all, an adequate spiritual, intellectual, or ethical compass
to guide you through the complexities of your existence, and
you endure suffering both acute and profound. Factor in divorce
and separation from children, both in terms of missing
them and feeling guilty at causing their confusion and pain,
and you have a recipe for absolutely harrowing anguish.
I point this out to underscore the fact that I have no difficulty
imagining that the man speaking here suffered terribly
during his marriage, that admitting his homosexuality to his
wife was wrenching. But let’s consider another aspect of the situation:
how self-obsessed and blind do you have to be to live
with someone for eight years and not notice that you’re making
her miserable and isolated as well?
Schow continues:
This young man emphasized the falsity of a prevalent
myth: “I saw my struggle with (and against) homosexuality
as my own cross to bear. I felt I was the one
who was suffering, struggling, trying to make things
right. What I failed to recognize was that my wife was
also part of the struggle even though she lacked basic
information.”8
In other words, this woman suffered not only because her
marriage failed, but because her husband withheld for eight
years “basic information” that could have helped her make
sense of her life. It’s easy to see how this man would feel his
sexuality was his own problem, and that dealing with it as he
saw fit was his right both as an individual and as patriarch of
PAGE 46 OCTOBER 2007
I suspect many gay men still marry straight women imagining they will be
“cured,” leaving the woman open to blame when the cure doesn’t take.
But why should women rather than men bear the burden for male sexuality?
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his family. However understandable that is, the fact remains
that although his withholding of information was not intentionally
cruel, it was nonetheless both intentional and cruel, a
deliberate choice.
I don’t want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious
ways in which the Church victimizes gay men. But I also don’t
want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious ways in
which men who uphold and benefit from patriarchy victimize
women, not only politically but personally, in the arena of relationships
and sex—and as long as men wield the priesthood
in the Mormon church, they do benefit profoundly and explicitly
from patriarchy, even when they’re gay.
I know it can take a while to figure out one’s sexual identity,
and that people who eschew sexual behavior during their
teens only to marry in their early twenties might not have a
firm handle on their sexual orientation. I’ve known both
women and men who figure out after a decade or two of heterosexual
marriage that maybe they’re not straight after all. I
know from watching friends go through it that it’s profoundly
painful. I also accept that some people are bisexual, and some
spouses don’t want or require monogamy.
But I also think from observing various marriages and divorces
that there’s something different happening when men
who know ahead of time that they are gay marry women they
know are straight, particularly in Mormondom. I submit that
patriarchy endows men with a sense of entitlement—witness
Christensen’s resentment that marrying women and fathering
children in a traditional family with a mother and father is still
the “exclusive territory of straight men”—that blinds them to
the real cost of their actions. Schow quotes a recently divorced
gay man who states that “I think a lot of gay men contemplating
heterosexual marriage underestimate the impact that
their actions have on their future spouse.”9
Whereas women
are trained, through doctrines like the new and everlasting
covenant, to accept, however grudgingly, that they will not
have the exclusive regard or affection of their husbands, that
indeed their feelings about their marriage are of secondary importance
to the patriarch’s wielding of authority.
Both Fales and Christensen stress that they informed their
wives of their homosexuality before the wedding, thus ending
the deception under which the courtship was begun. I agree
that this sort of honesty is called for before one embarks on a
commitment like marriage, and of course if the women really
want to accept the challenges inherent in such a difficult marriage,
that’s their right. But there are two points to consider
here. The first is that if a gay man interested in marrying a
woman wants to be completely honest and above board, the
truly appropriate time to make that admission is before the first
date, before the woman has begun to fall in love or envision
the marriage she might have with the man courting her.
Second, I doubt that even full disclosure before marriage really
improves the likelihood that such marriages will succeed. In a
separate response to Christensen’s essay, Marybeth Raynes
states, “it is difficult, even impossible, to count the costs of
being married to a gay person beforehand.”10
I believe the
costs are even more difficult to count when the straight person
in such a marriage is a Mormon woman, given how naively
and earnestly hopeful Mormon women are on the topic of
marriage.11
And despite Christensen’s announced expectation
that he will never be “cured” of his same-sex attraction, I suspect
many gay men still marry straight women imagining they
will be “cured,” leaving the woman open to blame—just as in
Fales’s case—when the cure doesn’t take. But why should
women rather than men bear the burden for male sexuality?
Even when gay men in straight marriages aren’t looking for
a cure, they are often still seeking to assuage their own suffering
and distress through means that create profound suffering
and distress for women, suffering and distress women
have been trained to believe they should accept.12
They have
been taught by the culture at large and by Mormonism in particular
to value their own sexuality and happiness less than
that of the men they are married to, and will do all kinds of
things to achieve a “righteous marriage” with a “good man,”
whatever those things mean.
SO WHAT DO we do instead? How do gay men and
straight women share the same planet, if not the same
bed? While I am not an advocate of marriage between
gay men and straight women, I do think they have much to
offer each other in terms of friendship. Among the many influential
gay men in my life are my boyfriend from kindergarten,
my date to the winter formal my senior year in high school,
and my ex-fiancee—all are gay returned missionaries. Then
there is my best friend Wayne, who grew up gay and Mormon
but never served a mission. Understanding their lives and their
sexuality has enriched my own.
Wayne and I currently live on opposite sides of the continent,
but we always meet up when we return home for holiday
visits with family. Over Christmas 2005, we went to see
Brokeback Mountain together. I was staying with my sister, who
is both a dutiful Mormon who avoids R-rated movies and a devoted,
knowledgeable fan of good cinema. She knew she
wouldn’t see the movie, but she wanted to hear all about it
when I got home. “Is it really as good as they say?” she asked.
“It really is,” I said. “Heath Ledger is amazing. He deserves
an Oscar. He reminded me of some of our cousins and uncles,”
I told her, thinking of relatives who grew up rodeoing and
wore their best boots to sacrament meeting. “He does a thoroughly
convincing job of playing a taciturn western cowboy.”
“I hear both characters have wives,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “And that’s one of the things I liked about the
movie: all the characters are treated with sympathy and respect.
The wives aren’t the focus of the movie, but they’re not
neglected, either. The situation does incredible damage to the
women, but they’re not treated as acceptable casualties. Anne
Hathaway’s personality becomes as brittle as her bleached hair,
while Michelle Williams—oh, it’s just heartbreaking.”
“Well,” my sister said emphatically, banging pots around as
she emptied her dishwasher, “it’s great that they portrayed it
well, but the situation itself is not OK. These guys have got to
stop marrying women.”
“You looking for an argument?” I asked. “I was engaged to a
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gay man, remember? I don’t think gay men should marry
straight women, either.”
“They’ve got to stop,” she repeated. “They’ve got to stop
hiding behind wives. It’s not fair to use women like that.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “And it’s a time-honored
practice with a name, in case you didn’t know: marrying a
woman for the purpose of passing for ‘normal’ in straight society
is called ‘having a beard’ because it makes one look
butch, and I think in general, gay men should be metaphorically
if not literally clean-shaven. But I also think that if you
want gay men to stop marrying straight women, one good way
of helping that happen is to let them marry each other.” She
made no reply to that—as a Mormon Republican, what could
she say?—but she at least nodded.
I know the gay community is divided on the issue of marriage—many
believe that heterosexual marriage is an inherently
flawed and repressive institution, an arrangement in
which one partner is always necessarily subordinate to the
other. Marriage is therefore, the argument goes, an institution
that lesbians and gay men would be better off not emulating or
participating in, since what’s really desirable is a transformation
of all romantic and sexual partnerships into something
more respectful and equal. I certainly respect that point of
view, but until we achieve that transformation, I feel that if
consenting adults of legal age want to marry a same-sex
partner, they should have the legal right to do so, regardless of
whether or not they take advantage of that right.
I also feel it is in the best interest of straight women to be
advocates of gay rights—it’s one of those easy situations where
the ethical thing to do is also conveniently self-serving. That’s
baldly stated, perhaps, but I’m convinced I’m right. I don’t
know if it’s necessarily in the best interest of gay men to be advocates
of greater rights for both lesbians and straight women,
but I know so many gay men who genuinely and passionately
espouse the cause of feminism and women’s rights. Their own
experiences with oppression have granted them enough empathy
that they can imagine something about what it’s like to
be a woman in this culture, and they want to make life easier
for their sisters, mothers, friends, and, in some cases, daughters
and ex-wives. They know that patriarchy is still patriarchy,
even if the patriarch is queer, and they’re willing to renounce
the privileges patriarchy extends to them as men, in the interest
of justice.
I think it’s important to underscore that point: gay men
must be willing to renounce the privileges of patriarchy if they
are truly interested in justice and equality not only for themselves
as members of a marginalized community, but for all
marginalized subjects. Furthermore, straight people who advocate
for greater rights and respect for gay women and men
must also critique any discussion of homosexuality that privileges,
automatically and without acknowledgment of what is
being excluded, men and their concerns over women and
theirs.13
As a male friend who critiqued an early draft of this
essay put it, a “form of liberation of one group of people—gay
men [which, let us not forget, accounts for around 5 percent of
the population]—that ignores the consequences of their actions
on other groups—women [50 percent of the population]—does
not amount to a liberation at all.” Instead, it raises
“the question of whether in the defense of such a generalized
form of privilege [i.e., the right to be head of the family in conventional
heterosexual marriages], patriarchy doesn’t in fact
(attempt to) transform the political demands of gay men into
demands that in the end provide support for the patriarchy
and other sorts or forms of hierarchy and privilege.”
Thus, gay men must not react like Christensen, who, when
he discovered my feminist critique of his position, was both
flummoxed and outraged. The possibility that feminists might
object to his demand that he be not merely granted but
granted approvingly, as his masculine due, the rights of a
straight man, never occurred to him. Rather, as he eventually
admitted to me, he had “always naturally seen straight men as
my enemy, and thus assumed that women and particularly
feminists were my allies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend,
and all that.” He didn’t respond, “Because I’ve actively worked
to better the lives of women, I always thought feminists would
support me when I claimed, as a gay man, the privileges of
straight men.” Instead, he assumed that since his enemy was
straight men in the collective, he could count on women and
feminists in the collective to support him, even as he demands
the privileges of a conventional straight Mormon patriarch—
the only difference being he acknowledges that he is not sexually
aroused by women’s bodies. But the enemy feminists oppose
is not the straight men Christensen claims the right to
emulate. The enemy is patriarchy, an entire system that teaches
men, regardless of things like sexual orientation, to expect
privileges at the cost of women’s well-being; Christensen’s
views are both products and examples of that system.
AS FOR MY own story, I did not marry a gay man, but I
was engaged to one, Matthew, in 1988, after we fell in
love at first sight. The story has a reasonably happy
ending: he had enough integrity and wisdom that he could not
permit himself to marry me, knowing that however much he
loved me, he would never lose his attraction to men. But it
took four years of my wheedling and prodding and begging to
extract that confession from him; before that, he kept insisting
that his refusal to marry me had nothing to do with sexual orientation,
that it was because I wasn’t the right woman for him.
Given how much I loved him, the whole thing absolutely tortured
me. His admission that he was gay was a genuine gift,
because it allowed me to stop hoping and get on with my life,
and from the day he made that admission, I have never ceased
to be grateful that he wouldn’t marry me.
Because sex is, after all, fundamental to this discussion and
to many discussions in feminism, I’ll state that we were both
Mormon virgins when we met, and we were both Mormon virgins
when he called off the engagement.14
As a result, I would
have to speculate as to what our sex life would have been like,
and though I consider sex thoroughly central to feminism, the
imagined particulars of my unconsummated relationship with
this man are pretty moot. Still, I know there was a time when
we couldn’t keep our hands off each other—that was one
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reason it seemed sensible to make wedding plans. I know that
I loved him body and soul and will love him until the day I
die, if not beyond that. I know that after he ended the relationship,
I was utterly bereft, thoroughly heartbroken, absolutely
devastated to the point of being suicidal—I couldn’t imagine
life without him. Not only that, but I felt profoundly isolated
and was convinced in my heart that all men are gay, or at the
very least homosocial. I saw so little evidence of genuine respect
among men for women that it was hard to believe men
could actually desire these creatures they demonstrated such
contempt for.15
Mercifully I eventually discovered that sex can be a truly
magnificent expression of love and respect and intimacy,
something that transforms the way you think not only about
sex, but about desire in the first place—pure and simple and
complicated and messy, about lust and love and your own libido
and your willingness and ability to give and receive pleasure.
But sex like that requires great generosity and sensitivity
on the part of everyone involved, and while I believe there are
some lucky people who simply land in relationships that provide
sex like that—I’ve met people who claimed it happened
to them, that losing their virginity was the most glorious experience
of their lives—most of us have to work at it, and some
of us never achieve it.
Matthew and I are still close friends, by the way, two
decades after we first met and fell in love. It hasn’t always been
easy, but it’s been worth it. We’ve helped each other through
some very tough times, and at this point we’ve known each
other longer than anyone we’re in close contact with but not
related to. He’s been in a committed relationship with his
partner for more than ten years. They live in Brussels, and I’ve
visited there a couple of times; I was even an official witness at
their wedding, an actual legal ceremony recognized by the
state. They have a daughter conceived through artificial insemination;
her mother is a lesbian friend of theirs who, along
with her partner, has primary custody of the child. Together
they’re a family—a good family.
In his commentary to Christensen’s essay, Ron Schow notes
that Christensen oversimplifies “his options as either temple
marriage or ‘a rampant life of unrestrained queerness.’
Obviously,” Schow points out, “there are many choices between
these two extremes.”16
Christensen ends his essay by relating
an epiphany that occurred after a “BYU fireside where
they tell you to get married. I’d pretty much tuned out the entire
thing,” he writes, “because it didn’t apply to me, but then I
got home, sat on my bed, and had a distinct impression that
yes, it did apply to me. Yes, I was gay, but that didn’t mean I
was excluded from Heavenly Father’s desire for his children to
marry and have families.”17
I am glad Christensen had that epiphany—I accept its
OCTOBER 2007 PAGE 49
Matthew Dann and Leo Flynn at their marriage 14 April 2007 at the Maison Communale (town hall) of Forest,
a district in Brussels, Belgium. Matt and Leo are flanked by their witnesses, Holly Welker (left) and Emily Flynn.
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S U N S T O N E
truthfulness. What I don’t accept is his oversimplified and religiously
predetermined interpretation (Emily Pearson writes
about the danger of taking “every spiritual experience . . . at
face value” in situations such as these18
), that any marriage he
might have must be with a woman for whom he feels little
sexual desire. While I certainly acknowledge the right of
Christensen and his wife to do whatever they want, and while
I am enough of a libertarian to think all consenting adults
should have the legal right to marry any other consenting
adult(s) who want(s) to marry them, I am also enough of a libertarian
to insist on my own right to remain skeptical of marriages
so thoroughly shaped and guided by androcentric,
misogynist ideology—particularly when that ideology is
cloaked in the guise of divine decree—and to criticize the
rhetoric employed to defend them.
In a coda to his essay, Christensen acknowledges that
I see that Marybeth [Raynes] states my dilemma more
accurately when she says that people in my situation
choose “between a deep love and erotic attachment
plus love.” This choice is a good deal more difficult
than the over-simplified choice I thought I was
making. By choosing heterosexual marriage, I’ve denied
myself the experience of loving someone I am
naturally attracted to and my wife the experience of
loving someone who is naturally attracted to her.19
Ultimately, I want for these gay men who choose to marry
straight women what they seem unable to want for themselves
or grant their wives: I want them to be able to form their families
and raise their children in unions where both partners are
beloved, cherished, and desired body and soul, and I think the
world will be a better place for me and all other straight
women and men when gay women and men have that right, as
a matter of course and without disputation, qualification, or
reservation.
NOTES
1. Jane Gross, “When the Beard Is Too Painful to Remove,” New York Times, 3
August 2006. Available at <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/fashion/03marriage_
bg.html> (accessed 4 August 2006).
2. Ben Christensen, “Getting Out/Staying In: One Mormon Straight/Gay
Marriage,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 38, no 3 (Fall 2005): 121–32,
148–51.
3. Sakia Gunn was a fifteen-year-old who was stabbed to death in Newark,
New Jersey, in 2002 for spurning sexual advances by announcing a sexual orientation
that excluded the sex of the attackers. Although Gunn’s murder galvanized
Newark at the time, it received scant attention elsewhere, particularly when compared
to the death of Matthew Shepard, and efforts to memorialize Gunn have
been relatively unsuccessful. Many analysts argue that Gunn’s race (AfricanAmerican),
class (lower), gender (female) and sexuality (lesbian) meant that her
murder mattered less in the psyche of the nation.
4. See Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Mixed-Orientation LDS Couples Count on
Commitment, Work and Love to Beat the Odds,” Salt Lake Tribune, 4 August 2006.
Available at <http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4136232> (accessed 4 August 2006)..
5. Whitney Joiner, “Live Girl-on-Girl Action!” Salon, 20 June 2006. Available
at <http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/06/20/girl_on_girl/index.html> (accessed
20 June 2006).
6. Steven Fales, “Confessions of a Mormon Boy: An Autobiographical OneMan
Play Written, Created and Performed by Steven Fales,” SUNSTONE, December
2003, 40–56.
7. Ron Schow, “Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions,”
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 38, no 3 (Fall 2005): 133–43.
8. Ibid., 138–39.
9. Ibid., 138.
10. Marybeth Raynes, “Thoughts of a Therapist,” Dialogue: A Journal of
Mormon Thought 38, no 3 (Fall 2005): 143–48.
11. Good-bye, I Love You (New York: Random House, 1986) by Carl Lynn
Pearson and "Irreconcilable Differences" (SUNSTONE, April 2006, 42–48) by her
daughter Emily Pearson are eloquent illustrations of this point.
12. See The Smith Family, directed by Tasha Oldham, Small Town Pictures,
2002. This documentary chronicles the lives of Steve and Kim Smith. Steve died of
AIDS after first passing the HIV virus on to his wife. She now lives with a deadly
disease resulting from her husband’s unsafe sexual behavior.
13. Even so committed a feminist and passionate an advocate of gay equality
and human rights as Carol Lynn Pearson can be guilty of ignoring the existence of
lesbians. An ad soliciting “stories from or about gay members of religious families”
for Pearson’s book, No More Goodbyes—Embracing our Gay Family and Friends in
Spite of and Because of Our Religions, appears on page 57 of SUNSTONE, April 2006.
Pearson specifies that she seeks “true experiences from gay people, parents, siblings,
wives/former wives, friends, that involve religion either as a part of the
problem or a part of the solution (or both)” (emphasis added). There is no mention
of husbands/former husbands of gay people; not even the gender-neutral term
“spouses/former spouses” is used. Thus, the unconscious assumption seems to be
that gay is a subset of male rather than of human being; the unconscious message
seems to be that lesbian experience doesn’t count. I pointed this out to Pearson at
the 2006 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium; she acknowledged that it was an unfortunate
and chagrin-inducing error, and said it was one she would not make again.
14. As evidence of the role of sex in feminism—and the ways in which that
role is ignored—I’ll relate an anecdote about a panel I attended in 2005,
“Advancing Feminist Sensibilities among Mormon Men,” the abstract of which
read:
Why aren’t there more visible and vocal male feminist voices within
the Mormon community? The all-male panel will talk about their journeys
toward becoming feminists, the challenges they face in maintaining
feminist sensibilities in Mormon culture, and ideas they see for
encouraging other Mormon men to take more active feminist stances.
Audience discussion will follow.
In the audience discussion after the panel, I tried to ask how sex fit into the
panelists’ understanding of feminism. I was greeted initially by a confounded silence
from all four panelists. Eventually one panelist responded, though his answer
made clear that he thought I was asking whether or not he enjoyed sex with
women. While I was glad to know that he did indeed, I was trying to ask something
very different—I was trying to ask if they understood the way sexual denigration
is often a primary tool in efforts to disempower women and if being a male
feminist had transformed how they understood, experienced, and enjoyed sex.
Unfortunately, I was not able to express that at the time of the panel, but even after
the panel, when I was better able to gather and articulate my thoughts, I didn’t get
very encouraging answers. One panelist said to me, “I can see how feminism has
real ramifications in regards to sex, but I never thought of it that way; I never
thought of feminism as anything but a political movement.”
15. At some point, I realized that there are plenty of straight men in the world,
and that it is completely possible to feel sexual desire for someone you find contemptible—that,
in fact, certain kinds of sexual arousal and activity are fundamentally
expressions of contempt, often deliberately so. Although I hope the following
examples are not part of the personal experience of most people reading
this article, I think it is important to call attention to some of the ways heterosexual
sex can involve contempt for women: the brutal attempted date rape described
by Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, for instance, or sex with a prostitute so a
man can feel entitled to call the woman he’s having intercourse with “a filthy
whore,” the point being that denigrating and shaming a woman is a turn-on. Then
there’s the custom practiced in some Islamic societies, where a group of men rape
the virgin daughter or sister of a man who has committed certain crimes, in order
to dishonor his family: whether or not the woman’s impending shame and pain
helps the men who perform the rape become aroused, there remains the fact that
debasing and humiliating her is the primary motive for the sexual act, to the point
that she is expected to kill herself after it. And there’s always the use of systematic
mass rape, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, etc., as a means of both torture
and ethnic cleansing.
16. Schow, “Homosexual Attraction,” 139.
17. Christensen, “Getting Out/Staying In,” 131.
18. Emily Pearson, “Irreconcilable Differences,” 42–48.
19. Christensen, “Getting Out/Staying In,” 149.
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