My husband divorced me for his gay lover

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.”

I represent one of those real life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families.

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.

I tried to convince him to stay, to stick it out and fight to save our marriage. But my voice, my desires, my needs—and those of our two young children—no longer mattered to him. We had become disposable, because he had embraced one tiny word that had become his entire identity. Being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships, and community. All of this was thrown away for the sake of his new identity.

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.”

I truly believe that judge was legislating from the bench, disregarding the facts of our particular case and simply using us—using our children— to help influence future cases. In our society, LGBT citizens are seen as marginalized victims who must be protected at all costs, even if it means stripping rights from others. By ignoring the injustice committed against me and my children, the judge seemed to think that he was correcting a larger injustice.

My husband had left us for his gay lover. They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage.

My ex-husband and his partner went on to marry. Their first ceremony took place before our state redefined marriage. After it created same-sex marriage, they chose to have a repeat performance. In both cases, my children were forced—against my will and theirs—to participate. At the second ceremony, which included more than twenty couples, local news stations and papers were there to document the first gay weddings officiated in our state. USA Today did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media.

At the time of the first ceremony, the marriage was not recognized by our state, our nation, or our church. And my ex-husband’s new marriage, like the majority of male-male relationships, is an “open,” non-exclusive relationship. This sends a clear message to our children: what you feel trumps all laws, promises, and higher authorities. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want—and it doesn’t matter who you hurt along the way.

After our children’s pictures were publicized, a flood of comments and posts appeared. Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my ex-husband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me.

There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally.

Every same-sex family can only exist by manipulating nature. Behind the happy façade of many families headed by same-sex couples, we see relationships that are built from brokenness. They represent covenants broken, love abandoned, and responsibilities crushed. They are built on betrayal, lies, and deep wounds.

This is also true of same-sex couples who use assisted reproductive technologies such as surrogacy or sperm donation to have children. Such processes exploit men and women for their reproductive potential, treat children as products to be bought and sold, and purposely deny children a relationship with one or both of their biological parents. Wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is always missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.

If my husband had chosen to stay, I know that things wouldn’t have been easy. But that is what marriage is about: making a vow and choosing to live it out, day after day. In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, spouses must choose to put the other person first, loving them even when it’s hard.

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.

Our two young children were willfully and intentionally thrust into a world of strife and combative beliefs, lifestyles, and values, all in the name of “gay rights.” Their father moved into his new partner’s condo, which is in a complex inhabited by sixteen gay men. One of the men has a 19-year-old male prostitute who comes to service him. Another man, who functions as the father figure of this community, is in his late sixties and has a boyfriend in his twenties. My children are brought to gay parties where they are the only children and where only alcoholic beverages are served. They are taken to transgender baseball games, gay rights fundraisers, and LGBT film festivals.

Both of my children face identity issues, just like other children. Yet there are certain deep and unique problems that they will face as a direct result of my former husband’s actions. My son is now a maturing teen, and he is very interested in girls. But how will he learn how to deal with that interest when he is surrounded by men who seek sexual gratification from other men? How will he learn to treat girls with care and respect when his father has rejected them and devalues them? How will he embrace his developing masculinity without seeing his father live out authentic manhood by treating his wife and family with love, honoring his marriage vows even when it's hard?

My daughter suffers too. She needs a dad who will encourage her to embrace her femininity and beauty, but these qualities are parodied and distorted in her father's world. Her dad wears make-up and sex bondage straps for Halloween. She is often exposed to men dressing as women. The walls in his condo are adorned with large framed pictures of women in provocative positions. What is my little girl to believe about her own femininity and beauty? Her father should be protecting her sexuality. Instead, he is warping it.

Without the guidance of both their mother and their father, how can my children navigate their developing identities and sexuality? I ache to see my children struggle, desperately trying to make sense of their world.

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.

This type of devastation should never happen to another spouse or child. Please, I plead with you: defend marriage as being between one man and one woman. We must stand for marriage—and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

Janna Darnelle is a mother, writer, and an advocate for upholding marriage between one man and one woman. She mentors others whose families have been impacted by homosexuality.

I must say that it is EXTRAORDINARILY RARE for judges in these cases to NOT award custody to the woman.

Based on what? Can you give a citation with accurate statistics? Judges can do anything they want. In big cities, you will find specialty law firms to handle divorce cases involving professional men who are wealthy and will do anything to destroy their former wives so they can take the children and go off with their new partner, whether male or female. Is this because they want the children? Often, no. They just want to reduce the amount of child support they must pay; or they want to destroy the ex because she is the proof of their betrayal and guilt.

The article says her ex and his gay partner both make more money than she does. It wouldn't surprise me if he were a lawyer, doctor, executive or accountant.

I actually agree with you. But the ex husband in this article doesn't appear to have been cheating on her -- which he could have done -- he simply divorced her.

Are you sure you read the same article as the rest of us? If he hadn't been cheating, how come he suddenly "decided" he was gay? He was probably having anonymous encounters in gay bars and men's rooms for years, which is why he never left before. But then he Met Somebody... who talked him into dumping his family and going whole hog into depravity.

I,a guy,would think that there'd be "warning signs" for a wife.I mean,it's one thing for a woman to say "I'm too tired" but when the husband says it night after night...

It's not like that. First, you appear to have accepted the gay propaganda that homosexuals are born that way, and absolutely cannot function as heterosexuals. Neither of those things is true. No one is born gay. And most people who practice homosexual sex also have sex with straights, some more than others.

Those on the thread trying to blame the woman are naive. And obviously you are unaware of the numbers of men in your own circle of acquaintances over your lifetime who are "on the down low" with behaviors they are ashamed of or do not wish to reveal. Some, it was a few experiments during school days, Others, once in awhile over the years. Still others have been switch-hitting all their adult lives, and lying about it.

In ten years this guy got perverted by the MSM and society. I’ll guarantee that when they married ten years ago he was straight as an arrow. LGBT is surrounding and tempting all of us.

I disagree; I think he always had struggles with thoughts, but managed to push them away, believed marriage to a woman would "cure" him, or had guilt about his thoughts, started having a few encounters after the honeymoon ore off and kept his escapades in men's rooms secret until the gay propaganda and gay marriage legalizations started up. I seriously doubt he was straight as an arrow; rather, he may have had childhood abuse issues or teenage experimentation that was later fueled by increasing access to porn on the Internet.

I just want to scream,”Shut up lady,life isn’t fair——move on”

Her children are still young and in their formative years, and they come to her with the disturbing images and scenes they are witnessing every time they are with their father, by court order, and you think she should have moved on by now? What is wrong with your thinking here?

I just want to scream,”Shut up lady,life isn’t fair——move on”

I dismissed myself after reading a few. Keep up your posts and share whenever you can. This was not a speculation, it was an actual outcome and much can be extrapolated from it.

“What is wrong with your thinking here?”

—

I’m insane.

"LGBT is surrounding and tempting all of us."

I dunno, it's not very tempting, for me anyway, to be surrounded by misfits, weirdos, psychos and freaks.

What it is doing is desensitizing us. It is in every television show and print media every day. I believe George from New England may be saying that it is tempting us not to care about it any more and not to react to it.

And in that sense, the gay lobby has been sucessful. Even when states have voted against gay marriage by clear margins, the voice of the people has been overturned and silenced by liberal judges. Gay militancy is making most of us think about things we never, ever wanted to hear about or know about, if only so that we can answer our kids' questions from their politically correct school indoctrination.

This is not a new phenomenon unfortunately. I have seen many instances of a female leaving a man to live with a lesbian lover and take the kids and get all the benefits of generous alimony.

I agree; just as harmful to the kids and devastating to the abandoned spouse.

“Human Resources Departments” such as you describe here more than amply demonstrate that they are nothing other than the lifestyle revolutionaries’ nose inside Corporate America’s tent. Ban them federally by regulations issued by the Labor Department. If we do not ban them, then the HR departments will soon be running political re-education camps to eliminate all but the politically correct from their jobs and income.

I don't think there's even "homosexual," -- not,anyway,in the sense of a permanent exclusive state, let alone an "identity."

The percentage of men who are simply incapable of copulating with a female is very, very low. Such men should not marry women, and cannot, since if they cannot successfully complete an act of "vaginal" intercourse, the marriage is null under both civil and canon law. Meaning, there is in reality no marriage.

Any man who vows himself for life to one woman and then gives himself to a different partner, man, woman or dog, is an adulterer, no matter what the LGBT Bacon-Lettuce-and-Tomato commentariat says, an no matter whether there was a divorce or not. He's a liar and a vow-breaker. That's the "identity" he's taken upon himself --- the one that really matters.

I seriously doubt if there was anything “LATENT” about this husband. And it never should have been tolerated for as long as it obviously was. Lots of things wrong here if the facts are correct.

______________

You assume too much. Delusional disorders occur with all sorts of people at all sorts of ages.

I’ve often wondered how pervert males “father” children in the first place.Not in my most desperate,depraved moment could I “perform” with anyone but an adult human who has two “X” chromosomes.One would think the opposite would be true with pervert males...and yet children often appear.
Am I missing something here?

_________________

If you were delusional you could. If you thought you were a horse, you would love horses.

It is very unusual for the father to get custody of the offspring. Sometimes it’s because the mother is a junkie or something similar. I wonder WHY the husband got custody and what pertinent facts she’s leaving out.

___________________

I don’t know about in your area but in some states the leaving spouse who remarries and has a new spouse at home wins the case. Especially if the new couple is wealthier and has better lawyers. I have seen two cases where solid women lost primary custody to the husband and new wife...and had to pay child support.

The law is not fair. The law is not just. The law is only enforced.

Well what’s ridiculous about her argument is that she believes that the problem is that this guy was able to run off and shack up with another guy — not that she married a gay guy. It would have been better to stay in a sham of a marriage and have them both miserable? Homosexual men shouldn’t marry women, and women shouldn’t marry homosexual men. That way, everyone is happy.

__________________

Why would you think that she would marry a homosexual guy? Men sometimes lie. Perhaps you hadn’t heard.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.