Gay marriage : A protection for heterosexuals, these exes say

by smkovalinsky | November 6, 2009 at 05:05 pm

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One often hears the argument from those against gay marriage that "Gays are not denied the right to marry: they can legally marry a person of the opposite gender." . But for this group of gay marriage defenders, that is where the nightmare begins.

Within the heated gay marriage debate , there is an often overlooked group which sides with gay marriage: Their motive, however, is not only equality for gays, but protection for heterosexuals. These are the ex-wives and ex-husbands of people who tried to be straight, but in the end, could not fight being what they were: gay.

Some of these former spouses have reached a point of understanding; others are filled with bitterness or self reproach. But it is clear to them that legalized gay marriage might well have - and likely would have - saved them from wasted years and painful divorces.

Some people became suicidal when forced to confront the fact that they had been duped: Their spouses loved them but could not be attracted to their gender and had married them to be "respectable".

One woman found that her husband was seeing another man, and was devastated that he had married her only to please family.

Another woman, after 31 years of marriage in which she was filled with shame and self-loathing because her husband did not have much interest in intimacy, found her husband was looking at internet gay pornography, and arranging meetings with gay men. When asked how long he had known he was gay, he told her he had known in highschool. When she asked then why had he married her and stuck it out for 31 years, he told her that's how long he had fought it for.

If anyone could have talked himself out of being gay, Kimberly Brooks said it was her husband.
He wanted to be straight; she wanted him to be straight. .

Kimberly Brooks calls people whose marriages ended like hers "collateral damage."

"I think straight spouses are the nameless, anonymous victims," she said. "We're not ignored -- because that sounds intentional -- but unseen."

Brooks, who lives in Arlington, was 28 when she met Robert Webb on a blind date. He was perfect: tall, handsome and a lawyer. As a husband, she said, he treated her "wonderfully," celebrating with champagne the day she got her master's degree. They talked about having children.

Webb said he never meant to hurt her.

"I married her because I loved her," said Webb, a lawyer in Orlando whose firm has an office in Washington. "I married her because I wanted us to spend the rest of our lives together. We had lived together and things were fine. I thought I had conquered that thing I didn't want to be."

But then he met the man he's been with since. "And there was this incredible overriding basic attraction that drove everything else out of my life," he said. "It was no longer a matter of mind over matter.".