No More Beards?

I actually attended the panel at the 2005 Salt Lake City Sunstone Symposium where I saw the presentation of the paper published in the October 2007 issue of Sunstone, "Clean-Shaven: No More Beards." The author's talk actually made me squirm a bit. Not because I particularly disagreed with her central argument -- that gay men and women should be allowed to choose to marry a same-sex partner if they wish -- but because of the angry tone. The predominant emotion I felt at the time was relief that I was not one Ben Christensen, some hapless homo who had earned her wrath by marrying a woman and then compounded the sin by daring to write about the experience in Dialogue. And what was worst of all when he married was he knew he was gay, and so did his fiancée! And apparently, after publishing his article in Dialogue, so did everybody else!

Now as you can see from this recent picture, I rather like beards, and so does my partner. (I've tried to shave it on numerous occasions, but he won't let me because he likes it.) We're not anti-beard in this household. But we're talking about literal beards, not the figurative type which is a pejorative term applied to the wife of a gay man. In the classic sense of this meaning of "beard," a gay man marries a woman in order to create the false impression that he is heterosexual, and then he fools around with men behind her back, all the while enjoying the benefits of heterosexual social privilege. We are not so fond of that kind of beard.

But obviously, neither is Ben Christensen. Or, maybe he just didn't get the instruction manual, because he failed to acquire a proper beard on at least two counts. He forgot that when you marry a woman, you are not supposed to announce to the whole world that you are gay. That sort of defeats the purpose of marrying a woman in order to hide your sexual identity. Second, you don't remain faithful to your wife, and make infidelity extremely difficult by announcing to her and to everyone else in advance that you are gay, thereby building a certain kind of accountability into your marriage. That to me seems like guaranteeing that you will get the worst of both worlds: public skepticism about you caused by homophobia, and private inability to experience the same-sex sexuality a very important part of you craves. It does also, on the other hand, help to ensure that your marriage is based on something like total honesty and genuine affection. Now call me crazy, but if a gay man wishes to marry a woman, he should do it exactly the way Ben did.

Now this essay did express concerns about marrying under such circumstances that I find quite legitimate. One concern is that the time for announcing your gayness to a potential opposite-sex romantic interest is early rather than late in the dating process, preferably on or before the first date. Why? Because once a woman becomes emotionally invested in a relationship, once she falls in love with someone, she is not likely to be able to think as clearly as she ought to about the realities of marrying a person of differing sexual orientation. And if you don't think that it is possible to become emotionally invested in a relationship after a single date, then you've never dated at BYU. The time for her to decide if this is really something she wants to get mixed up in is when she has zero emotional investment, and is therefore totally free to decide, "Yes, the difficulties will be worth it," or, "No, this is not what I've envisioned for me."

A second concern she expressed is that in a society and in a Church where there is such extreme bias against homosexuality, and where there are still lots of folks talking about and believing in the possibility of voluntary change in sexual orientation, it is still possible to have dangerously unrealistic attitudes going into such a marriage. Again, I agree. There's disclosure, and then there's disclosure. Telling a potential significant other that you once struggled with same-sex attraction and then leaving it at that is probably not sufficient. Encouraging a potential significant other to think in terms of life-long conditions, and maybe even pointing her to educational resources providing real-life stories of marriages that failed and marriages that succeeded under such circumstances probably is closer to what I'd consider full and fair disclosure. Inviting her to read MoHo blogs, for instance, might be a great starting point for such disclosure.

A third concern she expressed is one I agree with only partially. She complained that no one who's ever getting married has any clue what they're getting into. But no person on the verge of getting married -- gay or straight -- ever thinks seriously in terms of the possibility that this might fail. To the contrary, young engaged folks are almost always bubbling over with the we're going to take on the world and succeed where all others have failed mentality. They probably are not normal if they do not also occasionally have attacks of the what can we possibly be thinking mentality. This just goes with the territory of the two conditions of youth and marriage. And life just is not (or should not be) about always playing it safe.

I admire Ben/Mr. Fob a lot. I also respect his fundamental motives for getting married, which are obviously not (to anyone with eyes and a heart) trying to somehow wrongfully claim heterosexual privilege that doesn't/shouldn't belong to him. His motives as I understand them, as he himself has clearly explained, include wanting his own biological family, and that is an understandable, even admirable, motivation. He clearly loves FoxyJ a lot. And there are certain things about marriage that should be held sacrosanct, one of which is namely that how Ben/Mr. Fob and FoxyJ work things out between them to make their marriage thrive and be happy is their business.

There is a heartache for me, though. It is to do with the fact that while Ben and others who pursue the particular path of love he has pursued are guaranteed protections and privileges and even a certain social status, my partner and I find ourselves facing very real disadvantages and discrimination because of the path of love we have pursued. I understand our choice is evil and all that, so we probably deserve whatever we get. But still, when you truly love someone, you hate to think that he might be imprisoned just because he can't establish his citizenship through you, or that he might get really sick and be hospitalized, and you would not have the fundamental right of helping to ensure that he gets the medical care he needs, and so on. And I am aware that folks feel obliged to deny me and the love of my life those kinds of fundamental human rights, because apparently the success of the entire Western-Civilization-thing depends upon coercing us to marry heterosexually. But it is a heartache nonetheless.

I have sort of given up on the worldly marriage thing. I have gradually grown in the awareness that whatever society says and does, there comes a point where you have to grow up, face your feelings, and take responsibility for your moral choices and your relationships. You have to figure out who you are, what you want, and then accept the risks and consequences of pursuing the path that you know is right for you. In Mormon circles, there's a special term we have for that: Free Agency. I admire Ben (and Beck, and Abelard, and Geckoman, and -L- and others) for having done that, and I pray for the grace and the love and the courage to do the same.