Posted on 09/29/2014 9:50:01 AM PDT by wagglebee
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.
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.
The Divorce
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.
A New Same-Sex Family—Built On the Ruins of Mine
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.
My Children Deserve Better
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.
Reprinted with permission from the Public Discourse.
No he didn't.
"When injustice becomes the law; rebellion becomes duty." - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson didn't say that either.
“Gay men shouldn’t marry women. “
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Of course they shouldn’t but in the post to which I responded you blamed the woman for her choice. They often don’t know that the man is gay.
In both of the instances I know the women came from strict,old-country homes and married quite young. They were blindsided.
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Homosexual marriage hasn’t been around long enough for there to be any sort of statistical sample to show something like gay fathers getting custody at a higher rate than straight ones.
However we do know that judges are bending over backwards to advance the cause of gay rights and marriage, something the author mentions. What happened to her can be seen as a logical progression of that.
Now, I’m not ruling out that there’s nothing else at work here. But there’s no evidence of it yet, and in it’s absence this woman deserves the benefit of the doubt.
The woman asking for advice didn’t complain - someone else giving the far-left advice reported me.
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.
Likewise, the man may not have known, particularly if he married young or came from a strict, old-country home. But I'm dumbstruck by the fact that the author of this silly screed is primarily upset at her ex husband for leaving her, not for marrying her. Sure she could be the naive victim, but my guess is she knew.
Really? That's odd. It's not tempting me. Ten years ago I was straight as an arrow and ten years later I still am.
The reality is that EVERY case of a divorce includes one or both of the spouses determining that the other wasn't the person the thought they were or had changed from the person they were.
Cmon, all I’m saying is there would not have been one sign ten years ago that she could have seen or sensed. How many people do we know that are changed by the people they associate with? satan got a grasp and the rest is history.
It appears that we do not agree.
My thoughts also.
Ah c'mon! Despite having grown up in a less-than-liberal home I knew by the age of 14 that females,and only females,caused certain changes in my body...and thoughts.If male perverts are "born that way",as most claim,then the same thing would have happened to them when they saw a male...and *only* a male.
All the way back in 2004 you couldn't tell the difference between John Wayne and Liberace? Really?
Your presumption is wrong, I think, that "she married a gay gay." The "guy" is obviously not exclusively gay: if he were, he couldn't have performed sexually with his wife and fathered two children with her.
You have to conclude that he's a bisexual who decided to dishonor his wife, his vows made before God (if it was a religous wedding) or at least made to his wife in the presence of the whole community; to mis-raise and sexually corrupt his children; and to sow division and discord within his whole extended kindred system--- all in order to cater to his sexual appetite.
He's selfish, dishonorable, and deluded. That word "gay" is just part of the delusion.
I'm thinking more and more that our species is inherently heterosexual simply on the basis of the fact that we manifest sexual reproductive differentiation.
People who want to pursue greater personal sexual satisfaction by trashing their first (and in fact, only) marriage are doing wrong. I don't care whether they call themselves "gay", "bi", "swingin'" or "straight." They are putting their own lusts above other people's well-being, and that is selfishness.
Next year he'll decide he want's somebody else's husband, or maybe somebody else's wife. We can't accept the excuse that it was just his "nature" --- as if he "had" to pursue his own satisfaction --- faith, family, honor and decency be damned.
The tone of her article annoyed me more than whether she knew or not.
She said “I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.”
I,I,I,-—reminds me of Obama—it’s all about her.
I just want to scream,”Shut up lady,life isn’t fair——move on”
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My niece was taken by her first husband. He was wealthy and spent lots of money in her. My mom loved him because he wrote her a thank you note after visiting her, and he had the best manners.
2 months after they were married, my niece walked in on him with another woman. He had been sleeping around on her before the marriage.
His mom was a big democrat judge in Texas, so can’t say I was surprised.
I only met him at the wedding, and I was not taken with him. The wedding was very expensive and showy.
My parents never liked my husband until after what happened to my niece. My hubby is not flashy and smooth, and he’s quiet. Of course, we’ve been married over 20 years.
Vicky Gene Robinson was an Episcopal priest when he abandoned his wife and daughters to move in with another man and pretend they were married. If he had done the same thing for another woman, he would have been (rightly) condemned. Since it was for a man, he was promoted and made a bishop. I fine the current story just as disgusting. Infidelity is bad. Perversion and infidelity together are not good - they are even worse than infidelity alone.
“Do as you will is the whole of the law” is the religion of these reprobates.
You may not be aware of this, but lots of gay guys have fathered children with women. The rest of your comment is pointless because you're apparently not aware of that possibility. I'll also point out that -- remarkably -- there's no allegation of infidelity, although infidelity is pretty common in marriages of all kinds. He simply divorced her. Almost certainly a better outcome than the alternative. I wish many cheating straight men and women would have the decency to divorce their spouses instead of cheating on them.
I dunno, it's not very tempting, for me anyway, to be surrounded by misfits, weirdos, psychos and freaks. It's why, despite growing up in an extremely liberal city and attending a leftist college, I was never even tempted by liberalism or the Democrat party. I like to be surrounded by normalcy.
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