Another Reason to Tell Them the Truth in the First Place

An important part of the radicals' agenda against the Montgomery County sex-ed curriculum has to do with the idea that gay people choose to be gay, or, to put it another way, that they could choose not to be. Obviously, a big part of this has to do with defining the word -- more than the word, the concept, really. "Gay" is a word that has only within our lifetimes come into common usage, and it is one of those that gets flakey when you look at it too closely.

Let's say you're talking about a man who is attracted to other men, dates other men, and, if you asked him, would tell you he's gay. OK, except for those holdouts who don't like the cheerfulness of the word, we would be comfortable calling this person "gay." Several features fall into line: physical attraction, behavior, self-identification, and identification by others. So this is a pretty easy case.

How about a man in prison who finds that he can gain protection and favors by performing sexually with other (male) prisoners, even though he only dated women before his sentence and will only date women afterwards? Here the behavior supports the term, but other factors are missing. He may even dress the part in order to make his role more obvious or more successful, but I don't think most of us would call him "gay."

The difficulty really comes to the fore in the opposite type of situation. Say there's a guy who is secretly attracted to men, but never acts on it. He presents himself to the world as straight, and puts his impulses out of his mind whenever he can. But he knows it's there. I get the feeling that guys like this typically think that other men suffer this same tendency, that straight guys in general actually lust after other men, but just don't say anything about it. Would you call this guy gay? I can imagine describing him as someone who is "really gay, but doesn't act like it," or even "actually gay, but doesn't know it." These last two cases suggest that we are talking about an essence, a quality of the person, more than any behavior.

Can you be gay and not know it? I have definitely seen guys who have not realized this about themselves, even though it is apparent to everyone else. So, yeah, if you asked me, I'd say this can happen.

I suppose, in general, the word should be used for the whole package -- sexual feelings, behavior consistent with that, self-identification, self-presentation.

The point is that some aspects of the whole package are, in fact, under conscious control. A man with homosexual feelings may choose not to act on them or even pretend to feel attracted to women, and to some extent I think a guy with those feelings can choose not to identify himself as gay.

Nobody really has a nice, clear answer about why some people are sexually attracted by members of their own sex, but it is a constant fact seen in every society. Most people understand that sex has something to do with love, and that there is something ... good .. about falling in love. It is not that hard, then, to understand why people who are attracted to others of their own sex would choose not to deny themselves the fulfillment that comes with falling in love, and the pleasure that comes with sex and intimacy.

On the other hand, there is a longstanding social circumscription that pressures people with homosexual feelings to either pretend they are straight or, at least, conceal their true feelings. This circumscription has been more or less crumbling for the past few decades, and we are now at a point where most members of our society are able to accept homosexuality.

Some men get trapped in the game of pretending, and this morning's New York Times has an interesting article about gay men who find themselves in a heterosexual marriage.

THEY spend decades denying their sexual confusion to themselves and others. They generally limit their encounters with men to anonymous one-night stands and tell all manner of lies if their wives suspect.

They consider themselves to be devoted husbands, conscientious fathers and suburban homeowners, and what typically brings them to the point of crisis in their 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s is their first emotional connection with another man.

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. When the Beard Is Too Painful to Remove

As MCPS considers how to present the topic of sexual orientation in the classroom, they need to be aware of the consequences. If you taught students that a gay person can just stop, that they can just decide to become straight and that's that, you might lead them down a path that leads to this, to secrets and lies and double-lives and broken marriages.

The demand for support groups for gay, married men, as well as traffic in Internet chat rooms, shows that so-called “Brokeback” marriages have hardly disappeared, as many experts assumed they would, even in an age when gay couples, in certain parts of the country, live openly and raise children just like any family.

Leaving a marriage and setting up housekeeping with a gay partner is not what most married gay men have in mind when they join a support group, according to Stephen McFadden, a clinical social worker, who runs such groups in Manhattan. Instead, Mr. McFadden and others in the field say, their clients generally start out committed to the opposite goal.

Well, yes, it would be handy, wouldn't it, if those feelings would just go away, if there really was such a thing as an "ex-gay."

Even after a pained awakening or acknowledgment of their sexual orientation, these men want to save their marriages, Mr. McFadden and others say, either by lying, promising their wives they will not have sex with men or persuading them to accept their double lives.

Yet, such arrangements succeed for only “a small percentage’’ of couples, Mr. McFadden and other therapists said, but the stubborn attempt often makes these men unwelcome or uncomfortable in support groups for gay fathers, which are easy to find but largely the province of men who are long divorced.

One support group member, Steve T., is a Long Island doctor, married to his high school sweetheart and the father of three school-age sons. He said he felt the sting of judgment when he tried a group for gay fathers. “They thought my desire to stay married was part of my denial,’’ said Dr. T., who would do almost anything to keep his family together and his suburban lifestyle intact, even after telling his wife that he is gay.

She is his “best friend’’ and the “perfect co-parent,’’ said the 44-year-old doctor, who agreed to be interviewed on condition he not be fully identified and his secrets thus revealed to relatives, neighbors and patients. He enjoys the social life of a popular suburban couple, adores his in-laws and wants to live in the same home as his children.

I am imagining what this is like to some of our readers who subscribe to the most sex-obsessed stereotypes. Can you guys picture this? A gay Dr. Ward Cleaver, sipping a beer and flipping burgers on the grill while the boys throw a football around.

But he also wants to continue a love affair with a man like himself: married, with children, a lawn to mow and a comfortable life. And until a few weeks ago, Dr. T. said, “this was working great in terms of getting our needs met and not disrupting our families.’’

Dr. T.’s wife had agreed she could live with his sexual orientation provided he didn’t act on it. So he lied and said his homosexual relationship did not include sex. But she wasn’t fooled and forced him to move into an in-law apartment in the family home, a way station to a more formal separation.

This development has left him stunned, one moment sympathetic to his wife’s position and the next disbelieving that they can’t work it out. “I love her, but she wants me to be in love with her,” Dr. T. said. “She wants to be my one and only. Everything we have will be at risk if, God forbid, we divorce.’’

Man, I'll tell you, I'm glad these guys aren't asking me for advice. This is a big mess.

Skipping down a little bit ...

...Gary J. Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute, a research group that studies gay issues at U.C.L.A., blended data for The New York Times from the 2000 Census and a 2002 federal survey of family configurations, and found that the percentage of gay men who had ever been married could be as high as 38 percent — or as low as 9 percent — depending on whether respondents were asked their sexual orientation, whom they had sex with or whom they found attractive.

Of the 27 million American men currently married, Mr. Gates found, 1.6 percent, or 436,000, identify themselves as gay or bisexual. Of the 75 million men who have ever been married, 1.8 percent, or 1.3 million, identify themselves that way. But, in both cases, when the men are asked about behavior if they have ever had sex with men, not what they consider their sexual orientation, the number of men who have ever been married doubles.

Yes, that definition problem again. There are some pretty funny jokes about this, which I will not repeat here. Part of the concept has to do with self-identification; apparently there are a lot of guys who do stuff with other guys but don't think of themselves as being gay.

The sort of arrangement Dr. T. hoped for — a proper marriage and one or more relationships with men on the side — is not unheard of. Cole Porter pulled it off and so did James McGreevey, New Jersey’s former governor, who left office, and his wife, in 2004. Mr. McGreevey, 48, has spent the last year writing a memoir, “The Confession,’’ to be released on Sept. 19, and recently, with his new partner, Mark O’Donnell, 42, moved into a Georgian mansion in Plainfield, N.J.

THE specter of AIDS has led to a formal and presumably safe way for gay married men to have it all, known as a Closed-Loop Relationship. Instead of risky promiscuous sex, a married man has two “monogamous’’ relationships, one with his wife and one with another man, usually married. Done according to the rules, enumerated on Web sites and online support groups, all four parties agree to this setup.

Yikes. Can you imagine keeping all that straight?

Look, I don't think I'm too out-of-line here if I suggest that this would all work out better if gay guys just married other gay guys in the first place.

Closed-Loop Relationships are anathema to Bonnie Kaye, the former wife of a gay man, who runs the Web site www.gayhusbands.com and conducts “How to Come Out to Your Wife’’ workshops. “If they’re too selfish to leave, I won’t work with them,’’ Ms. Kaye said. “If they love their wives, they need to give them their lives back.’’

Deception remains common. An unscientific survey of visitors to www.marriedgay.org found that more than half of the married gay respondents said their wives did not know of their sexual inclinations. Of those, a slim majority were considering whether to come clean but a third said “never.’’

There's quite a bit more to this story, mostly telling about some guys who have dealt with this and what happened to them.

It looks to me like the whole problem is caused by the perpetuation of some beliefs that are just wrong. Look, they can say "there's no gay gene" until they're blue in the face, but the fact is, guys often report that they know they're gay before they hit their teens. You can pretend, you can deny it, you can marry a woman and have kids and the whole thing, but when it comes down to it your life is going to be missing something important.

This is just another reason to teach students the facts in the first place.