Gay man realizes he shouldn't have entered an opposite-sex union—so no same-sex marriage for anyone, demands ex-wife

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09/22/2014

by Jeremy Hooper

A woman by the name of Janna Darnelle was married to a gay man. That gay man sought a divorce after he realized he could no longer live a lie. For whatever reason (she glosses over it), a judge then seems to have awarded primary custody of their two children to the husband.

Now Ms. Darnelle is using that personal tale to condemn marriage equality writ large. In her telling, legalized same-sex marriage is the catalyst for what happened to her. And in Ms. Darnelle's view, her gay husband should have just stifled his truth and gone about their marriage, no matter how lacking in passion it might have been:

In the fall of 2007, my husband of almost ten years told me that he was gay and that he wanted a divorce. In an instant, the world that I had known and loved—the life we had built together—was shattered.
...
Try as I might to save our marriage, there was no stopping my husband. Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers. No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: “I am gay, and I deserve my rights.” It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.”
...
Every time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.”

But I refuse to be silent.
...
A good marriage doesn’t only depend on sexual desire, which can come and go and is often out of our control. It depends on choosing to love, honor, and be faithful to one person, forsaking all others. It is common for spouses to be attracted to other people—usually of the opposite sex, but sometimes of the same sex. Spouses who value their marriage do not act on those impulses. For those who find themselves attracted to people of the same sex, staying faithful to their opposite-sex spouse isn’t a betrayal of their true identity. Rather, it’s a decision not to let themselves be ruled by their passions. It shows depth and strength of character when such people remain true to their vows, consciously striving to remember, honor, and revive the love they had for their spouses when they first married.
...
My children and I have suffered great losses because of my former husband’s decision to identify as a gay man and throw away his life with us. Time is revealing the depth of those wounds, but I will not allow them to destroy me and my children. I refuse to lose my faith and hope. I believe so much more passionately in the power of the marriage covenant between one man and one woman today than when I was married. There is another way for those with same-sex attractions. Destruction is not the only option—it cannot be. Our children deserve far better from us.
FULL: Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me - and Our Children [Public Discourse]

The truth, of course, is that gay men should not enter into heterosexual unions. Unfortunately, that has been happening for eons due to the pressures of a heteronormative society. The legalization of same-sex unions, and the acceptance of LGBT rights and people at large, will lessen this burden for future generations. That is a great thing for everyone, gay or straight.

But it is completely nonsensical for Ms. Darnelle to put out this story—and for Public Discourse and conservatives like Ryan Anderson, the editor of Public Discourse, to promote it—as if it is some sort of warning sign for the entire nation. Ms. Darnelle was probably caught off guard, sure. She feels betrayed, even. It probably is not a great situation on the whole. But first off, hers is a one-sided telling that seems to have many gaps (the primary custody thing in particular is unorthodox) and that is clearly motivated by her own personal religious and political leanings. But beyond even that, her column has nothing to do with marriage equality or even homosexuality, really. If anything, it has to do with the truth of sexual orientation, not any associated rights. But really it has less to do with being gay at all (other than her stereotypical attempts to besmirch her husband with possibly untrue and most definitely truth-stretched anecdotes about his supposed "lifestyle") and more to do with the ability to dissolve marriages through a process we call divorce. If there is any policy matter that Ms. Darnelle seems to be against it is the notion of legal dissolution of the marital bond. Every thing she mentions in her commentary could also apply to a straight man who left her for another woman—something that happens all the time with no one using it, or the step parenting that results, as an indictment of the institution of heterosexual marriage or the notion of blended families.

But this is where the anti-gay movement is right now: in a period where there desperation has led them grasping at straws and a place where they are turning nastier in the way that they do it. Increasingly, they are going after us and our family structures (Ms. Darnelle demands that same-sex families are "manipulating nature" yet says nothing about adoptive straight couples, heterosexuals who use reproductive technology, heterosexual stepparents, etc.) in really far-fetched yet truly nasty ways. They are losing on the merits so they are now acting like fortune tellers who see a devastated world that is trampled under the foot of a gay Godzilla. This attempt by Ms. Darnelle is a perfect example of the shameful zone into which our losing opposition has relocated.

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*If you've come here from Public Discourse (a site, oddly enough, that doesn't even allow for comments), here is my response to the very strange depiction of someone who doesn't come close to resembling my own heart and whose supposed actions are made up out of whole cloth: 'Public Discourse' writer introduces me to some guy named 'Jeremy Hooper,' who seems like a real ass [G-A-Y]

And those of you who chose to buy into the false-witness-bearing should also know that the author who wrote the hit piece falsely accusing me of corrosive and personally-targeted internet behavior, one "Rivka Edelman," is actually a person who herself has a penchant for making very crude, very personally-denigrating, very harsh comments about people on the internet. Lots of that here: "Rivka Edelman" is B.A. Newmark, prolific (and shocking) anti-trans activist [G-A-Y]

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*UPDATE, 10/2: I stumbled on a November 2013 video featuring the same story from the same Janna. Robert Oscar Lopez is the host of the video, which would seem to be just a little too coincidental considering subsequent developments (see above links):