In Defense of Choice

This post has been brewing inside for a year and a half, and sometimes I still get furious when I think what I will be writing.  Listening to Samantha's Podcast yesterday, and finishing Dancing With Crazy I felt the need to address something in the gay community that I haven't wanted to do for quite some time.

The LGBT community decries ignorance and bias, deplores homophobia and bullying,  thinks of closed-mindedness as a sin worse than aborting the immaculate conception, one of the main goals is achieving marriage equality spouting off that we deserve the right to choose who we want to marry.  I feel that I stand along with the rest of the community I identify with in all these regards.  However I've noticed a disgusting...how should I say this... a disgusting communal personality flaw and that needs to change.

There is a hypocrisy in our community that is glaringly obvious and I don't see anyone talking about it.  The hypocrisy I'm speaking of is we want to be able to choose who we marry, or how we live our life but cannot or will not let others do the same.

Coming out is a process, and for me a part of that process was trying out the celibate mormon life.  I admit I was a total douche bag and tried to influence others to live the way I lived.  I made the mistakes I am talking about and now that my life has changed dramatically I feel awful that I ever tried to do that.   When I was blogging at my other blog I would occasionally have those who have left the church leave me terribly hurtful and mean comments about how I am lying to myself and all I needed to do to be happy was to leave the church, or in other words, live my life how they were living theirs. 

When I was living a celibate life, and in the church I felt persecuted for choosing that life. Then when I left and was searching for someone to intimately share my life with feelings that people didn't agree with my choice to do so.

Then, in May 2010 the co-author of In Quiet Desperation announced his engagement.  I was working in a coffee shop in downtown SLC at the time that distributed copies of Q-Salt Lake.  In that particular week's issue there was a blurb mentioning the site "Danielledontdoit.com" (which has now been taken down)

Here is a gay magazine that celebrates differences, choices, and alternative lifestyles telling a grown woman not to make an informed decision to marry someone! I was seething.  The article went on to say, "If she goes forward with her plan to marry her gay fiancé on May 22, she might be “gambl[ing] on some kind of ‘holy experiment’ that is almost certain to fail...marriage is hard enough without trying to make it work when one of you is straight and one of you is gay...Please don’t sabotage yourself by sacrificing your life, your future, and your happiness for a marriage that has no credible assurance of surviving.”

What marriage has any credible assurance of surviving?  Because it is a mixed orientation marriage does not mean it will fail at all.  The MOMs that I have seen have been the strongest marriages I've ever seen.  Of course I have seen some fall apart and read horror stories from the likes of Carol Lynn and Emily Pearson, but it seems that the underlying issues would be present in typical heterosexual relationships as well.

Marriage is difficult, no matter what.  However, I believe that the there are challenges with a mixed orientation marriage that will definitely make a marriage stronger than those that are more easily sexually reciprocated.


I am definitely not advocating MOMs, the only thing that I am advocating is allowing two adults to make a consensual decision to live their lives together without fighting and making it a huge deal, because, isn't that what the LGBT community wants as well?