Category: Gay marriage

Finding Healing

~ Laura Lowder ~ 2 Comments

Despite my anger over what has happened between me and my ex-husband, and in the gay agenda in general, I have learned that there is a lot of woundedness there which truly warrants compassion.

Gays aren’t born that way — twin studies have always verified that — but they are born with a personality, a disposition which renders them at odds with the traditionally masculine world and sets them up for possible imprinting and identification as same-sex attracted.  In a gender that applauds athletic prowess and physical agility, the more sensitive or artistic male may have a sense of alienation from other boys.  He identifies more with girls.

Sadly, the sensitive male — and this includes my ex-husband — often possesses great moral insight and a strength of character that deserves to be recognized and respected as manly qualities . . . but are not.  DH was a force of nature when it came to personality, strength of opinion, power of persuasion.  In our circle of friends, he was universally regarded as a chaplain or sorts, a spiritual mentor.  He was loved and looked up to . . . but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t recognize our esteem. Years later, when I told him how we’d felt about him, he wept.  He was still wracked with disbelief in his own worth.

That strength of mind and will and faith are what made me fall in love with him.  Of course, my love couldn’t begin to heal his broken spirit; that required the affirmation of a masculine man; I, a woman, couldn’t meet his deepest emotional needs.  It takes a man to teach a boy how to be comfortable in his own skin as male. His father, a good man, a brilliant man, was also of a more sensitive nature:  quiet, gentle, studious.  Introverted. He could teach his sons how to handle the basic mechanical maintenance of their cars (masculine skills set), but he wasn’t in possession of those interests and skills that would have helped his boys fit in more easily with the other boys in the neighborhood.  DH preferred music to sports; he built up the self-defense of dismissing ordinary boys, then men, as “idiots.”

I wanted to be his all-in-all.  This was an unrealistic expectation, particularly given the circumstances.  Men need other men in their lives to push them to be stronger, better — “iron sharpens iron.”

Not only could I not be his all-in-all, the fact is that his misery with himself  rendered him too wounded to be able to love me at all.  I can pity him for this woundedness now.  It does not justify how he treated me after we were married, during our divorce, and after, in his continued insistence that, first of all, he wasn’t gay, but then, yeah, he was gay but that still had nothing to do with the divorce.

But it does allow me to look beyond my own sufferings and loss to find something in him that I can pity.  And I’m able after many years to remember that beautiful boy we all loved and looked up to — and to realize I still love him.

And in loving him, interestingly, I’m not tied to him by sentiment, but I’m at long, long last! liberated to get well, myself, and to build a proper life for myself, in which I can be my best self and not be entrapped in the bitterness or the resentments that had been my daily fare for so many years.

Why I Oppose Gay Marriage — Part Three: My Gay (ex-)Husband

~ Laura Lowder ~ 2 Comments

It’s not “just about (me.)”  I don’t oppose gay “marriage” out of personal resentment.  This issue is a lot bigger than my personal feelings (which are a lot more complicated than mere resentment).

When DH left us and began to openly hang out with his gay friends, his personality underwent a distinct change.  It wasn’t for the better.  The energetic, cheerful, beautiful boy who was always eager to help others, kind, compassionate . . . the “chaplain” of our circle of friends for more than a decade! – became cold, angry, remote.  His sense of humor vanished; he became crude and sarcastic.

This wasn’t just a matter of resentment towards me, as the villain ex-wife; he pushed away all our old friends, friends who loved him and would have accepted him regardless his lifestyle choices.  But suddenly they were “stupid,” “idiotic,” or some other quality that left them unworthy of continuing his friendship.

Through DH and a couple of gay neighbors and coworkers over the years, I’ve noticed that the gay community is badly mis-named “gay.”  Maladjusted, angry, resentful, hypercritical, backbiting . . .  the list of unhappy adjectives grows and grows.  It’s not about lack of social acceptance, either; even in safe, loving environments, even with a privileged status in our society, now, homosexuals are not gay by any stretch of the imagination.  Camp, maybe, but certainly not gay.

What does this have to do with gay marriage? And why would I want to deprive someone I claim I love of the comforts and benefits of a life partnership?

The real issue isn’t about “rights” or recognition; it’s about people being at war within themselves.  DH is angry because he’s at war with himself. His choices have violated the very best of who he is. I know that, and our friends see it, and on a deep level I think he knows it, too. Knows it and resents it.

See, the more you have that should make you happier, the more you resent that you aren’t happy, you blame everyone else and set a new objective to achieve, certain it will resolve the restlessness you’re feeling.

So the “program” isn’t working for gays.  When “progress” creates more bitterness and aggression, then the program is an utter failure.  Gay marriage won’t make gays happier; it is just one more false ideal to push toward.

Angry people make lousy spouses.  And legitimating gay marriage will, I fear, only further entrap miserable and bitter men and women in a lifestyle that has sucked the joy out of them, and replaced joy and well-being with misery and resentment. I see gay men and women becoming not more contented with the progress they’ve made in social recognition and approbation, but more and more hostile and aggressive. Fighting everyone as well as themselves, and getting more deeply entrenched the whole time.  

I want DH to be free of these traps. I want him to be honest with himself and true to his best self.  Gay marriage won’t give that to him; in fact, it will give him just the opposite, the inverse, of what he wants.

 

 

Why I Oppose Gay Marriage — Part Two: The Children

~ Laura Lowder ~ 3 Comments

I’m more than contented to let Robert Oscar Lopez and Dawn Stefanowicz and their various colleagues reveal to the world the intricate and painful realities of growing up in a gay household. As a straight spouse, I’m concerned with something a bit more basic:

Gay households deprive children the opportunity of learning to orient toward the same and opposite sex in wholesome ways.

I think it bears repeating:  homosexuality isn’t about sex; it’s about one’s orientation toward the same and the opposite sex in all dimensions of human relationship.  Kids need to see the camaraderie, the collegiality that can exist in opposite-sex friendships. They need to get a sense of a wholesome and emotionally healthy identity of masculine-feminine. They need to observe heterosexual relationships. They need to get a sense of the complementarity of masculine and feminine natures.

This just isn’t offered in gay households. The gay community is insular. There aren’t many who, given the choice, mingle with heterosexuals. That means their children are overwhelmingly socialized amongst homosexuals, not heterosexuals.  And homosexuals’ dynamic is rooted in what the late Leanne Payne referred to as the rejection of the True Masculine/True Feminine. Consequently, kids raised in a gay household are not going to be emotionally and psychologically grounded in their own gender identity.

I think this is overwhelmingly revealed in California, where the earliest pediatric transgender cases hitting the news media are the kids of lesbian couples — boys becoming girls.

But even apart from such drastic examples (which, in my opinion, are worse than unethical – they are criminal and should result in the children being removed from that household and placed in protective custody), imagine the self-doubt that occurs in kids who have gay parents!  Kids go through a phase, in early puberty, of intense friendship.  This experience is healthy and normal; a century or so ago, it was not uncommon for girls to have crushes on women teachers or other role models, to walk around with an arm around one another. . .  now that ordinary, wholesome experience has been sexualized to the detriment of our children.  “If Mom/Dad is gay, does this mean I’m gay, too?”

Kids bond with their parents.  That means it has to be so much harder for the daughter of a gay man to learn to bond with heterosexual men; she simply doesn’t know what real masculinity looks and feels like, she’s thoroughly oriented — imprinted — through her relationship with her father.

Now, these concerns are not irreversible. Gay parents could be proactive, taking the initiative to socialize their kids with their own heterosexual friends.  But will they? None of the ones I know think it’s anything to bother about.

Why I Oppose Gay Marriage – Part One: The Straight Spouses

~ Laura Lowder ~ 2 Comments

A conversation this week with a new acquaintance raised the old-for-me question: why do I oppose gay marriage? Don’t gays deserve equal rights with heterosexuals? Don’t I want them to have the same opportunities for happiness I enjoy?

Why do I deviate from the “Straight Spouse” standard reply that, because I love my ex-husband, I want him to be happy in his “real self”?  After all, how does gay marriage hurt me, individually? personally? —

Discussing abstract realities is always difficult, and this is an abstract; that is, it’s a reality that cannot be known by our physical senses (touch, sight, hearing, taste, etc.). Nevertheless, I keep coming to a place where I have to try to — not persuade, that’s not in my sphere of influence! But I do hope to speak well enough that people get even a partial glimpse of how I see things, from “behind my eyeballs” as it were.  So I keep trying, hoping the same old responses don’t feel tired to the person who’s reading them, while I keep reaching for better ways to say what I perceive and feel.

The question “how does gay marriage hurt you?” is bantered about like a challenge the opponent is suppose to yield, unable to defend.  But gay marriage does hurt me.  It hurts all of us.

Gay marriage suggests that there is no distinction between the sexes, that we are interchangeable parts of a social construct. This is an attitude that demeans me as a woman — demeans all women (and men, too). It says we have no intrinsic value or worth due our sex.  It says that the rejection of the opposite sex in favor of a different type of union is acceptable and laudable.

It also says that I have no value as a wife — that unique relationship to a husband that simply cannot be replicated in same-sex unions.  Of course, this is why California has abandoned the language of gender and opted for “Spouse One and Spouse Two” in their legal processes.

I was demeaned in my marriage to a homosexual.  I was unworthy of companionship, of basic, nonsexual affection. I was merely a personified abstract — a Wife — behind which my then-husband could hide. This misogynistic attitude is only legitimated through a recognition of gay marriage: it is a society saying that I, as a woman and as a wife, have no meaning, no value.  I am again only a personified abstract, this time expected to approve the very things that diminish my worth and render me inconsequential.

This I will not do.

I will not support gay marriage

~ Laura Lowder ~ 2 Comments

We are still embroiled in controversy, here in North Carolina, after Tuesday’s vote on the Marriage Amendment. There have been a lot of insults thrown our way, even by straight friends of gays who think we should have grown up and become more “with the times.” I’ve even seen comments like “I’m ashamed to be from NC” from people I grew up with, who were raised in traditional Christian homes with traditional, old-fashioned Christian moral values.

I’ve tried to find out from a couple of these friends how they’ve come to abandon as evil the values we were raised with, but no one is willing – or able – to give me an answer.

In the wake of this, I’ve looked at a couple of other “straight spouse” websites, and I’m disappointed, to say the very least, that each of them advocates for gay “marriage.”

Can you think of anything more insulting?

When my husband and I stood before God and man and exchanged promises, vows, with one another, we were participating in something holy. We thought in terms of “covenant” – an agreement between God and ourselves, instituting a new family bond; now I think of marriage also as a sacrament.

He entered this covenant falsely – I like to think it was not a malicious falsehood, but a lack of understanding on his part (we were, after all, very young at the time, and “nice people” simply did not discuss some things, where we lived), but it was false.

Nevertheless, the nature of the covenant is not destroyed by that false or mistaken attempt – my own intentions are not invalidated by his incapacity to enter into the sacrament.

And other women who’ve been through this, who are supposed to understand just what we’ve gone through, are telling me that I have an obligation to demonstrate goodwill and “friendship” by supporting –

a mockery! a travesty! a farce! an obscene mockery!

No! I will not betray my worth as a human being, my dignity and value as a woman, my purpose and significance as a wife, by sanctioning this bawdy burlesque.