Dear fundamentalist Christian readers of my Huffington Post blogs:
As per your advice, I am composing what could potentially become my online dating profile in my search for a wife, but I need your input. Imagine this as my profile:
Fabulous Gay Man in Need of Wife
Hello, ladies! I am a virile, bald, late-40s cowboy with a gray goatee and washboard abs. OK, that's not entirely true (I have never had washboard abs), but this is my first search for a wife, and I am not sure how this works. So let's start over: Hello, ladies! If one of you is to become my future wife, you will need to overlook the fact that I am gay. Last week one of my Huffington Post readers referred to homosexuality as my "condition." You will need to overlook my "condition" if you become my wife.
I have never had sex with a woman. Ever. I got uncomfortably close a few times, back when I was a teenager, but the thought was so unpleasant that I escaped from those tight situations by telling girls, "It's not the right time." I once kicked a girl out of my dorm room because, as I explained to my cowboy buddies, she was too drunk. My buddies thought that that was admirable of me. It wasn't. The truth was that I wasn't interested in having sex with a woman, no matter how willing, or drunk, she was.
So, ladies, you will understand, of course, that if one of you is to become my wife, there will be no sex in our relationship. My plumbing will not rise to the occasion when you take your clothes off. Trust me. If sex is important, you will need to find a gay man who can perform in non-erotic situations. I am not one of them.
Separate bedrooms will be required in our marriage. You'll have to pay your own bills, of course, because -- let's face it -- if there's no nookie between us, I am not paying your bills. On the plus side, you will not have to cook for me. I am not a male chauvinist, and besides, I am already a great cook. Chances are that I'll spend more time in the kitchen than you will. I'm really handy around the house, I can fix most things and I'm pretty good at growing flowers, too.
I am successful and fairly accomplished, and I'm a pretty good writer. I grew up with Christian values. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and I often write about my childhood experiences from my perspective as a gay man, but don't let that worry you. I no longer believe the Witnesses when they claim that Armageddon will probably arrive tomorrow. I no longer believe it's a sin to celebrate birthdays, either. I once had a Witness suggest that all gay people should stay single and celibate until Armageddon arrives. The End is so close, she promised, so we won't have long to wait, but I am thinking that I might just go out and find myself a wife. If you are reading this, perhaps you could be my wife.
I blog on The Huffington Post, as well. Lots of people read what I write. Sometimes they post comments.
So, dear fundamentalist Christian readers of my Huffington Post blogs, Mormons in particular, this is where I need your help. I'm kind of stuck on how to proceed. Just last week, in response to my piece about Mormonism and the conflict with being gay, a member of your church posted an interesting fact about the people in your religion. "[M]any are attracted to the same sex but nevertheless choose an opposite sex relationship," she wrote. So, dear religious people, I need to know more about the gay people in your church who have chosen to be in opposite-sex relationships. How many would you say there are? Can you quantify that? Out of the millions of gay people on the planet, how many have found fulfillment in opposite-sex relationships? When you claim that many gay men have settled for marriages with women in your church, can you tell us how things are working out for them? What are the chances that a marriage of that sort will work for me? Are the women happy in their marriages to gay men? Might some of those women be lesbians, in which case they would be on equal footing in terms of misery and dishonesty? I'm just curious.
And, presuming that we find a woman who is willing to settle for a relationship with me, how honest should I be about how unnatural it feels? Should I tell her that, no matter how wonderful she might be as a human being, she can never give me, emotionally or physically, what I receive from my same-sex partner? Oh, crap, come to think of it, if this hypothetical woman shows up, what should I tell my partner? Do I break up with him? Oh, my God, I can't even imagine how painful that would be. Can you imagine?
So let's assume, for the moment, that I break up with the man I love and find a woman from your church to replace him. Will you let me into your Mormon club in return? And, assuming that everything works out and I join your church, will I be required to pay the full 10-percent tithing that is required for membership? It seems to me that if, in order to belong to your club, I have to settle for a relationship that doesn't feel natural, I shouldn't have to pay the full 10 percent. I should get a discount. If I have to lie about who I am in order to get into your version of heaven, isn't your version of heaven full of liars? Maintaining a relationship that feels so contrary to my nature just feels so dishonest. Lying doesn't come naturally to me.
This is just so convoluted and confusing, but never mind about that. I need your help. You think I need to have a wife, so let's get back to my profile. I am a great catch. I have a great sense of humor. Some of you are funny, too. Sometimes you ask things that are quite hysterical when you learn that I am gay. Some of you, when introduced to my partner, have asked, almost in a whisper, "How do you decide which one has to be the girl?" That's supposed to be humorous, right? You don't mean that seriously, I hope? My partner is not, in any way, a girl. If I wanted to be intimate with a girl, I wouldn't have sent the drunk girl home when I was a horny teenager. Duh.
Many of you church people have offered to pray for me. That's funny. There are plenty of things you could devote your attention to in prayer: war, poverty, starving children, even your favorite football team's prospects of winning the big game. There are so many problems in this world that you could ask God to resolve, yet you choose to pray for me. At a book signing I held in Phoenix last month, a woman who had come to listen to me read from my book introduced herself as a born-again Christian. She then offered to pray for me. She didn't buy my book, but she did promise to pray for me. That's happened more than once.
I suppose she didn't buy my book because she wasn't interested in understanding who I am or where I come from. I think her only interest is in being committed to misunderstanding people like me. Many of you religious people are like that. You think that in order to make God happy, I must pretend to be something I am not. I do not want to spend my life alone, so the only choice you give me is to find a wife. The next time a woman shows up at one of my book signings and offers to pray for me, I will ask for her name. And then I'll ask for her phone number. She might be from your church. Perhaps she would like to be my wife. Yeah, that could work.