Trasnsgender baseball games! Condominiums! How can we just stand by while these horrors continue? Why shouldn't gay men be forced to stay forever in loveless marriages like the rest of us?
Haha, yeah, the kids are brought to "gay parties" where they are the only kids there. I am sure all the other gay partiers are just fine with these particular kids always being at their gay adult parties. This is clearly a lie.
Also, what does a "transgender baseball game" look like? Do the players attempt to bat with gloves,and field balls with their bats instead?
I would add that gay marriage should actually reduce the number of marriages like Darnelle's. Gay people are now free to marry someone they naturally love rather than trying to make a marriage work so they can pass as straight. Being able to live a more authentic life is a good thing for everyone.
Janna would be happier with a miserable husband mechanically impregnating her like the Lord commanded because then at least her kids would get to experience the wonders of a watching parents live a life of unfufilling, grinding duty and that would inspire them to do the same.
If she loved him, it's possible she wanted to help him make healthy sexual choices instead of those he did.
But if a spouse is a drug addict, alcoholic or the in this case a sexual deviant unwilling to help themselves sometimes for the sake of yourself and your children you have to make the tough choice.
You know, if Mormons allowed gay people to be themselves instead of guilting them into sham marriages, maybe she wouldn't have married a closeted gay guy in the first place.
Nope. I'm sure that's not the answer. The answer is to further ostracize gay people. That will solve the problem.
Brooklyn Reader @10, thank you for that link! I can't help but make with the full copypasta of the ex-husband's reply:
Wow, I have to say that many of you just sound ignorant of reality. But I guess that should not surprise me since this is a conservative blog.
I will post my original post so that you all have that perspective as well. Although I know nothing will change your perspectives on the "gay/equality" issue.
I do find it interesting that all of you and she will hide behind alias names. If you really are so brave and righteous then why hide?
For the record, Janna Darnelle Finkbeiner Anderson, is a real person and happens to be my ex-wife. I will not comment on all of the points of her blog due to the multitude of errors (like, I have full custody, because I don't) and a very subjective view of history and reality, but I would like to add a few thoughts to the discussion.
1. Like most, my coming out was a very complicated process of self discovery and of learning what truth and authenticity really are. I never felt that I was living in denial or a lie, but rather sexuality was a choice and I must be bisexual. I was part of a conservative subculture that not only promoted this dogma, but also created an atmosphere of fear. I did meet a man in my mid-30s and for the first time fell in love and experienced what unconditional acceptance and love was. Through this I could no longer remain in my marriage.
2. Fear is a very powerful emotion and to be honest has a crippling effect. I was a part-time pastor and our life revolved around church life and serving the lord. I was in fear of losing everything I knew: my friends, my job, and my kids. This reality did come true, except for losing my kids. I am glad that never happened.
3. My kids are thriving and doing very well emotionally and academically in spite of living in two completely different households having two parents with very different worldviews.
4. For the last 7 years I have wished my ex-wife would embrace her god and faith and find a way to move on and heal from the pains of the past. Unfortunately this has not happened.
And Like most of the comments it seems that the Church and Christians have no concept of love, acceptance, redemption, or of scripture.
SB@12: I know you hate it that gay people will now have a better chance at happiness, when you feel they don't deserve it. But how about the Jannas of the world? Can you find it in your heart to feel happy for the all the future Jannas, who will now not have to suffer the fate of marrying men who are not attracted to them, because those men will now have other options? Surely you must see this as a silver lining in what for you must otherwise be a cloudy day? Those poor Jannas did nothing wrong, right? Or is the suffering of the Jannas of the world the price the righteous must pay, in order to make the wicked more miserable?
As a divorced mom, I would be pretty enraged if my ex were hanging out with prostitutes while they were there or taking kids to adult parties where only alcoholic beverages were served. However, this woman seems to be lying through her teeth. She said that her ex-husband received primary custody of the kids, when in reality it is joint custody with her having them 60% of the time.
I do feel sorry for her--the guy used to be a pastor! A pastor's wife usually must be super-religious, or at least prepared to fake it. To go from that expectation to having her kids brought to LGBT events--well, I can see where it would be a major paradigm shift for her.
You didn't read very carefully. The ex was unable to choose his and his families welfare over his deviance. Absolutely "the Jannas of the world' should divorce under such circumstances.
And his behavior post divorce suggest a profoundly selfish unfit parent who shouldn't be trusted unsupervised with children.
Oh and fyi- 'gay people' (more accurately those who've chosen a homosexual lifestyle) deserve happiness as much as anyone else.
And their best chance at it is to seek a healthy lifestyle over their deviance. I wouldn't advise a hungry man to eat bark for his happiness. Our bodies simply don't work that way. And I wouldn't advise a man or woman to engage in homosexual behavior for happiness- for the sane reason.
This obsession with 'natural' families creates some fascinating revisionism. For example, I have a friend who, like myself, lost one parent at a young age. While my parents were (afaik) heterosexual, my friend's mother (the surviving parent) is a lesbian, and had a child during a relationship that was much like that of Janna and her husband. Does this mean my friend's single-parent gay family is less natural than my single-parent straight family?
The reality is that diverse families - families with gay people, families muddling through after someone dies, families without legitimacy, families with remarriages, shotgun families, families with more than 2 parents - have always been normal. Having two parents who were married before you showed up and who stay alive and married until you're an adult is both historically and presently a minority situation. Conservative narratives always present family diversity as a narrative involving a "natural family" shattered by the evil forces of divorce and/or gay rights!! That 'natural' includes the disruptive forces of violence, sickness and death seems to elude them.
@20: If I was insufficiently explicit in @18: When gay people can get married, the pressure (from people like you) for them to marry straight people of the opposite sex is less effective, because they have an alternative. This means the future Jana's of the world are much less likely to wind up married to people who are not attracted to them. This is a good result from gay marriage, do you not agree? I'm aware of the fact that, on the whole, you think gay marriage is a terrible thing. But, perhaps you'll agree that even something you find terrible in balance can have good aspects to it.
@19- "I would be pretty enraged if my ex were hanging out with prostitutes while they were there or taking kids to adult parties where only alcoholic beverages were served."
Even she doesn't claim either of those things happens. She claims they were at adult parties at which alcohol was served (which might be weird in Mormon communities but is normal elsewhere) and that there is someone who lives in the condo complex who sees a prostitute. (Which is probably true of most condo complexes.)
Ha Ha, I've met men had left wives and come out of the closet constantly ever since I was 16 and just out in the 80's. Legal marriage didn't suddenly start this.
If a Utah judge really gave sole custody of the kids to the husband in a divorce where he came out as gay, I suspect there's more to Ms. Darnelle's story than she's telling us.
By the way, my parents served alcohol at their grown-up parties. So that's child abuse now?
Seattleblues is just really mad that gay people are able to live openly and raise happy families, when he is reduced to making up a fantasy family to prove to random strangers on the interent (who wish he would just go away) to prove what a real man he is.
Explains his pitiful obsession with Dan Savage and his family as well.
The woman's thrown in every possible bit of hyperbole and yet people still believe her. Truly, I'm shocked. For me the tip-off was that the children (according to her) are forced to live in a place that has photographs of unclad women in provocative poses plastered all over the walls. Right. Two gay men are going to cover the walls of their condo with pornographic photos of women. And then, thanks to BrooklynReader (thank you #10!) we read the ex-husband's measured rebuttal and discover the poster in question (the single poster, if I read it right) was a Kylie Minogue tour poster. Hm. Nude and pornographic vs. pop diva. Would she have been happier if it had been a poster of Marie Osmond in full fat-life muumuu - that would have been after one of her divorces, so maybe she's not the best example. Also, no judge is going to award primary custody to the father in a divorce case unless there are pretty serious objections to the mother's way of dealing with the children, which points me toward thinking she must be the walking definition of an unfit mother. Or a liar, since it turns out that she has 60% custody. Hm. Witherspoon . . .
The more gay marriage is accepted, the less closeted homosexuals will enter into doomed relationships, setting up both them and their spouses for inevitable heartbreak.
@21: "Our bodies simply don't work that way."
THE FUCK YOU KNOW.
See, Seattleblues, there is a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for a bunch of rather primal drives, including aggression, sexual attraction, memory, and emotional responses. (Technically two parts of the brain, since there's one in each hemisphere.) There are stark and consistent variations between the sexes; a trained neurologist could tell just by looking at the amygdala whether the brain is that of a man or a woman.
Except, of course, for queer people! The amygdalae of homosexual men are similar to those of heterosexual women, and the amygdalae of homosexual women are similar to those of heterosexual men! This makes perfect sense, given that the sexual preference of a homosexual is, by definition, similar to that of a heterosexual of the opposite gender, and the amygdala is WELL KNOWN to be involved in sexual attraction. So no, YOUR body doesn't work that way, but SOME people's bodies do.
Could it be coincidence, you might wonder? NOT FUCKING LIKELY. When researchers treated fetal/infant rats in such a way as to alter the suprachiasmatic nucleus (part of the hypothalamus, another part of the brain with variations associated with sexual orientation) to be more like those of gay men, the adult rats turned out bisexual. I told you about that experiment OVER TWO YEARS AGO, along with other studies showing a clear link between neurological variations and sexual orientation, and you ignored it then. Just like I bet you'll ignore it now, because your opinions must be right, the facts be damned!
@21: "I wouldn't advise a man or woman to engage in homosexual behavior for happiness- for the sane reason."
I have a cousin, whom I have mentioned a few times, who is lesbian. Her parents were hostile when she first came out, but came to accept her for who she is fairly quickly. She and her partner have been happily in a long-term relationship for, oh gosh, close to a decade now, and they have two elementary school-age sons together. (Each is the biological mother of one of their sons.) The boys are perfectly well-adjusted and about as masculine as you'd expect of guys of their age; last I spent time with them, one was obsessed with dinosaurs and the other with trucks.
Do you honestly believe my cousin would be better off if she'd married (and possibly had kids with) some guy she wasn't attracted to and didn't love? Fuck sake, Seattleblues.
@34 This woman's story lacks credibility, for the reasons you and others have mentioned. The good news is that it looks like most people, including the readership over at the Deseret News, aren't willing to believe her outlandish tale. The only person that seems to believe this fairytale completely and without question is that perennial hatemonger Seattleblues. Because of course he does.
Janna is experiencing the five stages of grief, as a result of losing something precious to her (her marriage). Right now, she's done with denial ("my husband was hetero when I married him, so he can't be gay") and is wallowing in anger. Just bargaining, depression and acceptance to go, then.
@37 "Do you honestly believe my cousin would be better off if she'd married..."
Seattleblues doesn't honestly anything.
Someone needs to create a chrome extension that just turns all of his posts into the word "hodor" on repeat. It'd be much more informative and better for our souls.
I'm 57. Over roughly 40 years since I started meeting other gay people, I've known dozens--perhaps hundreds--of men who were either closeted and married to women, or who were divorced from women because the strain of living in the closet was too great. These marriages and divorces happened in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's, long before marriage equality was legal anywhere. Gay marriage had nothing to do with this woman's divorce.
I've had a man leave me for another woman, so I think we need to outlaw women (who aren't me). And one moved to Florida, so we need to outlaw Florida (I'm actually serious about outlawing Florida, but not for that reason). One lived in Port Orchard, so we need to destroy the Kitsap Peninsula. Am I making as much sense as this very wise lady?
Oh, btw... In re: "There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally."
A trans*man who may be able to carry a child and his cisgender gay male husband would be able to "create a gay family naturally" by Janna D's definition.
Oh, btw... In re: "There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally."
A trans*man who may be able to carry a child and his cisgender gay male husband would be able to "create a gay family naturally" by Janna D's definition.
I have a question for Seattleblues, who doesn't believe there are homosexual people per se, but only people who have chosen a homosexual lifestyle: What would you do if your daughter came to you and said the following:
"Daddy, I'm in love with a man. You might call him a sexual deviant, Daddy, but he really wants to help himself and to make healthy choices. And, because I love him, I really want to help him make those healthy choices. And he's asked me to marry him, and I said 'yes.' We're planning a June wedding. He's so excited about helping me choose the floral arrangments."
So...what would you do, Seattleblues? In the interest of helping society achieve a greater level of stability and a lesser level of deviance, would you happily consent to your daughter's marriage to the recovering homosexual and pay the tab for the wedding? Or would you say, "Honey, I really think you'd be better off finding somebody straight"?
@21
How can you be so blind as to not realize that advising a gay man to live a heterosexual lifestyle is exactly tantamount to advising a heterosexual man to live a homosexual lifestyle, or, to borrow your analogy, advising a hungry man to eat bark.
I'm sure that if her husband had left her for another woman & soon remarried, she would be opposed to opposite sex marriage....because her children might be considered part of a newly formed family....without her! Poor dear.
I dunno, considering (according to the husband) their marriage ended 7 years ago and yet the tone of Janna Darnelle's column suggests she's STILL majorly vengeful about it, I strongly suspect that if her husband had left her for another woman, there would have been a boiled bunny involved.
She should be happy that her husband is no longer forced to stay in a loveless marriage. She should move on with her life and find someone to love her. Ms. Darnelle's article just goes to show that the anti-marriage equality side has zero valid arguments on its side.
@ 40, i think that would be a wonderful gift to the registered commenters on slog, if they keep on refusing to ban offensive and minddumbingly idiotic bigots they could at least get a smart IT intern to develop an "hodor" list for us. Any registered commenter you put on there gets all their posts replaced with hodor!s if you view a discussion
I hate to sound like your mom, but if you ignore Seattleblues, he will go away.
You're not fighting the good fight, you're not lighting a candle in the darkness, you're not keeping the world safe for homosexuality--you're engaging with a troll whose only goal is engagement. You lose as soon as you play.
I think you've all forgotten that the Mormon Church -- in fact, all conservative Christians -- don't care in the least whether marriage partners are happy or miserable. The only important thing is for the marriage to continue until one of them dies.
59, no, not really. SB won't go away. I don't have a problem with that, because it's good to know how these people think. She honestly believes that she is a good person who knows how to love. Yet everything she says demonstrates that she is not a good person and doesn't love at all.
I'm sure she pays a lot to her church which tells her what she wants to hear. She's empowered by it, and now she will stride into the mix of those 'godless deviants' to prove.... that her understanding belongs to the 13th Century. The time when the earth was flat and your health depended on the four humors and everything was simple and you'd enjoy yourself by going to the hanging/burning/head lopped off of those who made life complicated. She's a throwback, and it's easy to forget how medieval people think.
@66: Seattleblues insists that transgender people should be addressed with their pre-transition gender. People using female pronouns to refer to him is a way of poking fun at that, sort of a "how do YOU like it when people who know nothing about you tell you what gender you're allowed to be?"
I'm telling nobody whom to marry. Not my business, unless they're trying to destroy marriage by redefinition, as with so called gay marriage.
But if I were there are all sorts of people I'd advise postpone or avoid marriage given their personal status. I wouldn't advise someone who couldn't afford it to marry, for example.
I also wouldn't advise marriage for a person who knows they have pedophiliac tendencies, unless they knew kids were an impossibility. I'd advise a drug addict or alcoholic to deal with that before marrying.
And I'd advise someone suffering from the disorder of homosexual inclinations to find a healthy approach to their sexuality before marrying.
See, reality isn't hard. It's when you try to ignore it, as with all liberal thought, and with gay so called marriage things get complicated
Reality IS hard for you, SB. Your every post expresses a losing struggle against it. You should just accept homosexuality as natural and healthy. You'll find the happiness that your false religion promises but never delivers.
@59 - You're right, of course, Matt Sweeney, but my great character flaw is that while I should avoid putting food out for trolls, nothing gives me greater joy than to bait a troll, that I may eat of his flesh and wear his hide as shoes.
Seattleblues - However "deviant"--a highly subjective term, and therefore only relevant to the degree that you are willing and able to debate moral philosophy in depth (I await, quite anxiously, the day you do me the honor of taking me on in that department, rather than running off with your tail between your legs; I can't enlighten the world without a credible opponent, and you seem, on occasion, to display a belief that you are one)--you may find homosexual acts, they are not fundamentally riskier than the same acts committed twixt heterosexuals.
Now, debating acts in and of themselves, without getting into the discussion of sexual orientation, is one thing; I can have that discussion with you, but you'd need to be willing to, well, have a discussion (privately, if you prefer; my email is yours if you want it, though given your willingness to express your views in public, your unwillingness to defend them publicly suggests the possibility of intellectual discomfort with your conclusions). If we limit ourselves to the matter of whether engaging in acts adds up to an orientation, I have to say that I'm not sure why it matters one way or the other. It may be that I am not a left-handed person, but simply a person who has chosen, in light of the greater strength of his left arm and dexterity of his left hand, to favor that hand in the use of writing implements and eating utensils. The functional difference is nil; I could force myself to use the right hand for the sake of conforming to an ideal, and suppose I should be at liberty to do so if playing at a handicap--using the hand that will likely always be weaker and less dexterous than the other, whatever my efforts to the contrary--is preferable to me for whatever reason. To what end I would do so, though, I cannot imagine.
Now, I'm "fortunate," I guess, in that my right to marry the wonderful woman I married has never been in question, so I've never had to make that call--be a part of the world where cohabitation and commitment is recognized by the state, the community, my employer, and "blessed," for lack of a more secular word (it's early, and this is a little rushed), with rights under the law relating to property and our individual and collective definition(s) and legal entities, OR form a satisfying union with someone with whom I am capable of feeling erotic and emotional attraction and attachment. Getting to do both was, for reasons we could spend all day teasing out and debating (again, that would require you to behave as though you had the strength of conviction and could live up to your claims of rational basis), available to me from the get-go.
So, as usual, please be specific, or remain silent (or offer a smartass retort that officially and obviously avoids any possibility of debate): What "healthy" function does the social bonding ritual of marriage accomplish with and for heterosexual couples--including the infertile, elderly, or voluntarily childless heterosexual couples who have been allowed to enjoy the benefits of this ritual being recognized through our insitutions--that it does not accomplish for same-sex couples? What "healthy" function does the social bonding ritual of mutual erotic play, stimulation, and orgasm achieve for heterosexual couples--including those who, by choice/chance/mecical reality, do not produce progeny by way of these acts--that it does not also achieve for homosexual couples? And finally, what empirically demonstrable civic utility is served by offering marital rights to those who form households around (in the modern parlance and understanding) mutual romantic and erotic bonds with members of the opposite sex while denying those rights to those who form households around the same bonds with members of the same sex?
I am eager, in equal measure, to hear something or nothing from you on the subject. :)
@73 - Marriage only exists in our defining of it; if it is recognized by the state, it is for that state's population to define. Our state's voters have seen fit to include in that definition the unions between individuals of the same sex.
I do, in general, think that there is something problematically selfish about divorce, particularly where children are involved. I think that has more to do with the ease and rashness with which people marry. Ideally, whatever obstacles there may be to marriage working--whether it's addiction, sexual orientation, a disinclination towards monogamy, irreconcilable differences in worldview/lifestyle/core temperament--would be well worked out prior to taking vows. When any of those obstacles are stigmatized (e.g., when people like you insist that they are failings to be overcome rather than differences to be accounted for, accepted, and, if possible, accommodated), though, the risk of ignoring them increases.
@68 - I don't think you're a "horrible human being," per se; the flaw you share with Seattleblues, despite what appears to be a marginally more nuanced view and a less pugnacious and defensive attitude towards your opponents, is a tendency to run away from debate that requires supporting argument of you, lending to a suspicion that you lack either the veracity, verbal acuity, or intellectual rigor to stand by your assertions.
I bet she actually does honestly believe that rewriting marriage as being between one man and one woman would have prevented him from being gay, leaving her, or any of the other conclusions she's come to. Bless her heart, the poor dear.
Guys, you're the ones who keep the SeattleBlues troll coming back. Stop feeding it and it will shrivel and die. It just makes you look all the more stupid by getting you so riled up over it's obviously nonsensical statements.
@81 - Perhaps just debates with a chance of ending in stalemate (at best)? Or maybe you just don't attend to your arguments. In any case, you've left every disagreement we've ever had dangling. The last word's no fun without some kind of acknowledgment. :)
@73--you never quite answered the question I posed @47
You wrote, "I'd advise someone suffering from the disorder of homosexual inclinations to find a healthy approach to their sexuality before marrying."
Fine. But--to return to my earlier question--if part of a man's "healthy approach" to dealing with "the disorder of [his] homosexual inclinations" involved marrying your daughter--would you give your blessing to the marriage?
This is a simple question. Only a "yes" or a "no" is required.
@84--But SB wrote (see @7) "If she loved him, it's possible she wanted to help him make healthy sexual choices instead of those he did."
This suggests that he sees it as a positive thing when a straight female marries and devotes her marriage to helping a man make "healthy sexual choices." Seattleblues has given the concept his imprimatur--at least in the case of Janna Darnelle.
He has also repeatedly gone on record to say that that there is no discrimination against gays in traditional marriage laws, because a gay man is as free as a straight man to marry a person of the opposite sex, and a lesbian is as free as a straight woman to marry a person of the opposite sex.
Moreover, he has derided the concept of gay marriage as "redefining marriage" for everbody else, therefore not leaving that as an option.
So since he is on record as (1) being against the redefinition of marriage, and (2) has suggested that gay men have the same right to marry women that straight men do, AND (3) has stated--in this thread and elsewhere--that there are really no gay people--but instead only people "who've chosen a homosexual lifestyle" (see comment @23), AND (4) stated that it is a noble thing for a woman to help a man with homosexual tendencies "make healthy choices," my original question still stands: if Seattleblues had a daughter who wanted to marry a man with "homosexual inclinations" in order to help him make healthy choices--would he give the marriage his blessing?
@70: "Hey, this 'my imagination trumps reality' stuff is fun."
Funny you say that, given your predilection for claiming that:
-your imagination trumps SCOTUS rulings
-your imagination trumps the overwhelming evidence regarding climatology
-your imagination trumps state anti-discrimination law
-your imagination trumps the fossil record
-your imagination trumps the combined medical knowledge of both APAs
and many other ways in which you claim that your opinions have primacy over reality. You're extremely delusional.
@73: "Not my business, unless they're trying to destroy marriage by redefinition, as with so called gay marriage."
NO, YOU MORON, IT'S STILL NOT YOUR BUSINESS.
What's with you and claiming that The Gay is out to "destroy marriage"? WHAT EXACTLY do you think will happen if gays can get gay married?
How exactly have my cousin and her partner being able to solemnize their relationship hurt you, or any other straight schmo off the street?
"See, reality isn't hard."
You seem to have plenty of trouble. no1curr
The Witherspoon Institute, which published "Janna Darnelle" (aka Janna Finkbeiner Anderson)'s screed also is behind the anti-gay Regnerus "study" hoax.
Unbelievably, this anti-gay hate group, Witherspoon, is able to operate from right on the Princeton University campus. The Southern Poverty Law Center should be looking very carefully at all of the malicious anti-LGBT hate mongering.
Let's see - a 10 year marriage means they got married around 2004 - a period of time I would call the modern era - NOT a more conservative time when unmarried adults were considered suspect somehow. The guy apparently never got the memo its not 1950 anymore, and adults don't have to be married to be taken seriously. What an idiot this ex-husband is. Why the fuck would ANYONE with an inkling they are gay enter into a straight marriage, forcing them to live a lie? NOBODY is forcing marriage onto anyone unless they are too weak to resist. Apparently, this man has no spine and barely deserves the title "man".
I can't stand people who can't face the truth, bury it under a phony marriage - then wait until kids/dependents are on the scene to finally "find themselves" - and that goes for breeders too. I'd sue the guy into the ground for being a chicken-shit dishonest asshole too weak willed to be honest with himself and admit he had no business marrying a woman in the first place.
Fucking marriage. It turns people into class A idiots.
Typical libs, using mockery to try and get your point across and you think that passes for debate.... like Jon Leibowitz aka Stewart. You are pathetic with zero values.
@98: Not to be too catty, but I think your post #94 was a little more "self righteous" [sic] than mine was.
I'm open minded to the views of others. I understand that not everyone has the same background, experiences, and values as I do. I just object to people insulting their audience's intelligence by feeding them lines of reasoning that don't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.
Allowing gays to get married hurts straights because it tells closeted gays that they don't have to stay in doomed straight relationships? Please. The implication there is that it's better to be in a doomed and empty romantic relationship with someone incapable of loving you than to amicably go separate ways so that both parties can be happy.
Don't crap in my cappuccino and tell me it's nutmeg. If you have an opinion that you want to wave in someone's face, give them the real reason for your opinion, not some half-baked bullshit that you think sounds less offensive.
Look folks, I just want some "straight" answers here. How is my opposite sex marriage directly being harmed by same sex marriages? What are the signs and symptoms of this harm?
Don't disappoint me, bigots. If you truly care about this issue, you'll answer the question.
The whole word "Marriage" should just be killed. After fighting the most horrendous "DOMA" Deportation that quite literally destroyed my relationship, my family and gave me the sobering wake up to just how nasty and unprofessional some so called "gay friendly" Immigration lawyers and so called equal rights groups, most of who really should be called "Equal only if we like you Groups", I've really come to hate the word marriage, and it's liberating to finally completely despise religion for what it is - the true one mental illness. We won our battle after 5 years and 12 years of being together, the United States finally said "Come Home" after we had to threaten to literally kill ourselves unless they did, we came home, well what was left of us, and then we had to begin again, face the truth about our closet case homo hating family, and start over, alone. It was like coming back from war, except we were never praised with "support our troops" stickers on people cars, instead we got nasty hate mail from family who shoved Jesus down our throats.Yes the joys of idiot woman like this one in the story speaks volumes about the level of ignorance in those who supposedly lead us all to more wholesome shores, my ass. It's good to be home, it's good to see clearly.
This story is likely fabricated. It originally appeared in the Witherspoon Report, and states that the name "Janna Darnelle" is a pseudonym. THe story mentions no state, no judge, no court, no verifiable detail of any type at all. Anyone familiar with Family Lw knows that the story does not unfold as the ghostwriter has scurrilously written.
This story is completely uninteresting to me (shrill white female member of conservative community who feels embarrassed - results predictable), EXCEPT if the author has written any more about it.
Like duh, it wasn't that her husband left her for a man that hurt her; OK, what does that mean to her? Does she accept, understand, or acknowledge that her issues are overwhelmingly not related to her husbands sexuality?
Janna Darnelle I wish I could speak with you in person. I myself have been through a similar situation although your story seems a little more harsh than mine but I can totally understand you. I've wanted to write a book to give ladies awareness of this uncomfortable subject because it happens more than we think. Unfortunately, partners hide this behind their spouses back for years. I do feel your pain and hurt just know this. Maybe someday I will be able to chat with you. Much respect to you. I hope your doing well. Praying for you and your family. God Bless. -Steph
There was no wholeness and balance in her own marriage from its very inception.
Also, what does a "transgender baseball game" look like? Do the players attempt to bat with gloves,and field balls with their bats instead?
"If you love someone, set them free." - Sting
This woman "mentors others whose families have been impacted by homosexuality." (At the end of the article.)
Spreading the denial, spreading the crazy, spreading malinformation.
Needless to say, it's quite a different, and less histrionic narrative.
How pathetic.
If she loved him, it's possible she wanted to help him make healthy sexual choices instead of those he did.
But if a spouse is a drug addict, alcoholic or the in this case a sexual deviant unwilling to help themselves sometimes for the sake of yourself and your children you have to make the tough choice.
Why she was unable to do so is anyone's guess.
Nope. I'm sure that's not the answer. The answer is to further ostracize gay people. That will solve the problem.
I do feel sorry for her--the guy used to be a pastor! A pastor's wife usually must be super-religious, or at least prepared to fake it. To go from that expectation to having her kids brought to LGBT events--well, I can see where it would be a major paradigm shift for her.
You didn't read very carefully. The ex was unable to choose his and his families welfare over his deviance. Absolutely "the Jannas of the world' should divorce under such circumstances.
And his behavior post divorce suggest a profoundly selfish unfit parent who shouldn't be trusted unsupervised with children.
Now, what has that to do gay so called marriage?
Oh and fyi- 'gay people' (more accurately those who've chosen a homosexual lifestyle) deserve happiness as much as anyone else.
And their best chance at it is to seek a healthy lifestyle over their deviance. I wouldn't advise a hungry man to eat bark for his happiness. Our bodies simply don't work that way. And I wouldn't advise a man or woman to engage in homosexual behavior for happiness- for the sane reason.
The reality is that diverse families - families with gay people, families muddling through after someone dies, families without legitimacy, families with remarriages, shotgun families, families with more than 2 parents - have always been normal. Having two parents who were married before you showed up and who stay alive and married until you're an adult is both historically and presently a minority situation. Conservative narratives always present family diversity as a narrative involving a "natural family" shattered by the evil forces of divorce and/or gay rights!! That 'natural' includes the disruptive forces of violence, sickness and death seems to elude them.
Even she doesn't claim either of those things happens. She claims they were at adult parties at which alcohol was served (which might be weird in Mormon communities but is normal elsewhere) and that there is someone who lives in the condo complex who sees a prostitute. (Which is probably true of most condo complexes.)
By the way, my parents served alcohol at their grown-up parties. So that's child abuse now?
Explains his pitiful obsession with Dan Savage and his family as well.
LOOK, THERE! EVIL PURE AND SIMPLE!
@21: "Our bodies simply don't work that way."
THE FUCK YOU KNOW.
See, Seattleblues, there is a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for a bunch of rather primal drives, including aggression, sexual attraction, memory, and emotional responses. (Technically two parts of the brain, since there's one in each hemisphere.) There are stark and consistent variations between the sexes; a trained neurologist could tell just by looking at the amygdala whether the brain is that of a man or a woman.
Except, of course, for queer people! The amygdalae of homosexual men are similar to those of heterosexual women, and the amygdalae of homosexual women are similar to those of heterosexual men! This makes perfect sense, given that the sexual preference of a homosexual is, by definition, similar to that of a heterosexual of the opposite gender, and the amygdala is WELL KNOWN to be involved in sexual attraction. So no, YOUR body doesn't work that way, but SOME people's bodies do.
Could it be coincidence, you might wonder? NOT FUCKING LIKELY. When researchers treated fetal/infant rats in such a way as to alter the suprachiasmatic nucleus (part of the hypothalamus, another part of the brain with variations associated with sexual orientation) to be more like those of gay men, the adult rats turned out bisexual. I told you about that experiment OVER TWO YEARS AGO, along with other studies showing a clear link between neurological variations and sexual orientation, and you ignored it then. Just like I bet you'll ignore it now, because your opinions must be right, the facts be damned!
I have a cousin, whom I have mentioned a few times, who is lesbian. Her parents were hostile when she first came out, but came to accept her for who she is fairly quickly. She and her partner have been happily in a long-term relationship for, oh gosh, close to a decade now, and they have two elementary school-age sons together. (Each is the biological mother of one of their sons.) The boys are perfectly well-adjusted and about as masculine as you'd expect of guys of their age; last I spent time with them, one was obsessed with dinosaurs and the other with trucks.
Do you honestly believe my cousin would be better off if she'd married (and possibly had kids with) some guy she wasn't attracted to and didn't love? Fuck sake, Seattleblues.
Seattleblues doesn't honestly anything.
Someone needs to create a chrome extension that just turns all of his posts into the word "hodor" on repeat. It'd be much more informative and better for our souls.
A trans*man who may be able to carry a child and his cisgender gay male husband would be able to "create a gay family naturally" by Janna D's definition.
A trans*man who may be able to carry a child and his cisgender gay male husband would be able to "create a gay family naturally" by Janna D's definition.
"Daddy, I'm in love with a man. You might call him a sexual deviant, Daddy, but he really wants to help himself and to make healthy choices. And, because I love him, I really want to help him make those healthy choices. And he's asked me to marry him, and I said 'yes.' We're planning a June wedding. He's so excited about helping me choose the floral arrangments."
So...what would you do, Seattleblues? In the interest of helping society achieve a greater level of stability and a lesser level of deviance, would you happily consent to your daughter's marriage to the recovering homosexual and pay the tab for the wedding? Or would you say, "Honey, I really think you'd be better off finding somebody straight"?
I await your answer with bated breath.
Really David? Where? Please provide links to this "wealth," because I'm simply not finding it. (And that might be the bigger story).
Heck, even that right wing bastion of panic mongering, The Drudge Report, has no headlines and links to any such stories today… Nada. Zilch. Zero.
How can you be so blind as to not realize that advising a gay man to live a heterosexual lifestyle is exactly tantamount to advising a heterosexual man to live a homosexual lifestyle, or, to borrow your analogy, advising a hungry man to eat bark.
Jesus would *never* approve of such a thing.
Janna - you're so awful you clearly drove your husband to The Gay.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/584…
You're not fighting the good fight, you're not lighting a candle in the darkness, you're not keeping the world safe for homosexuality--you're engaging with a troll whose only goal is engagement. You lose as soon as you play.
True story.
I'm sure she pays a lot to her church which tells her what she wants to hear. She's empowered by it, and now she will stride into the mix of those 'godless deviants' to prove.... that her understanding belongs to the 13th Century. The time when the earth was flat and your health depended on the four humors and everything was simple and you'd enjoy yourself by going to the hanging/burning/head lopped off of those who made life complicated. She's a throwback, and it's easy to forget how medieval people think.
You're right, Junior. Hard reality should mean nothing to anybody, damn it!
So, for today I insist that I'm a purple porcupine with green polka dots. Tomorrow maybe I'll be the king of England.
Hey, this 'my imagination trumps reality' stuff is fun.
If you're 3.
You're right too! Almost nobody here would recognize the good fight, let alone be fighting it.
I'm telling nobody whom to marry. Not my business, unless they're trying to destroy marriage by redefinition, as with so called gay marriage.
But if I were there are all sorts of people I'd advise postpone or avoid marriage given their personal status. I wouldn't advise someone who couldn't afford it to marry, for example.
I also wouldn't advise marriage for a person who knows they have pedophiliac tendencies, unless they knew kids were an impossibility. I'd advise a drug addict or alcoholic to deal with that before marrying.
And I'd advise someone suffering from the disorder of homosexual inclinations to find a healthy approach to their sexuality before marrying.
See, reality isn't hard. It's when you try to ignore it, as with all liberal thought, and with gay so called marriage things get complicated
Seattleblues - However "deviant"--a highly subjective term, and therefore only relevant to the degree that you are willing and able to debate moral philosophy in depth (I await, quite anxiously, the day you do me the honor of taking me on in that department, rather than running off with your tail between your legs; I can't enlighten the world without a credible opponent, and you seem, on occasion, to display a belief that you are one)--you may find homosexual acts, they are not fundamentally riskier than the same acts committed twixt heterosexuals.
Now, debating acts in and of themselves, without getting into the discussion of sexual orientation, is one thing; I can have that discussion with you, but you'd need to be willing to, well, have a discussion (privately, if you prefer; my email is yours if you want it, though given your willingness to express your views in public, your unwillingness to defend them publicly suggests the possibility of intellectual discomfort with your conclusions). If we limit ourselves to the matter of whether engaging in acts adds up to an orientation, I have to say that I'm not sure why it matters one way or the other. It may be that I am not a left-handed person, but simply a person who has chosen, in light of the greater strength of his left arm and dexterity of his left hand, to favor that hand in the use of writing implements and eating utensils. The functional difference is nil; I could force myself to use the right hand for the sake of conforming to an ideal, and suppose I should be at liberty to do so if playing at a handicap--using the hand that will likely always be weaker and less dexterous than the other, whatever my efforts to the contrary--is preferable to me for whatever reason. To what end I would do so, though, I cannot imagine.
Now, I'm "fortunate," I guess, in that my right to marry the wonderful woman I married has never been in question, so I've never had to make that call--be a part of the world where cohabitation and commitment is recognized by the state, the community, my employer, and "blessed," for lack of a more secular word (it's early, and this is a little rushed), with rights under the law relating to property and our individual and collective definition(s) and legal entities, OR form a satisfying union with someone with whom I am capable of feeling erotic and emotional attraction and attachment. Getting to do both was, for reasons we could spend all day teasing out and debating (again, that would require you to behave as though you had the strength of conviction and could live up to your claims of rational basis), available to me from the get-go.
So, as usual, please be specific, or remain silent (or offer a smartass retort that officially and obviously avoids any possibility of debate): What "healthy" function does the social bonding ritual of marriage accomplish with and for heterosexual couples--including the infertile, elderly, or voluntarily childless heterosexual couples who have been allowed to enjoy the benefits of this ritual being recognized through our insitutions--that it does not accomplish for same-sex couples? What "healthy" function does the social bonding ritual of mutual erotic play, stimulation, and orgasm achieve for heterosexual couples--including those who, by choice/chance/mecical reality, do not produce progeny by way of these acts--that it does not also achieve for homosexual couples? And finally, what empirically demonstrable civic utility is served by offering marital rights to those who form households around (in the modern parlance and understanding) mutual romantic and erotic bonds with members of the opposite sex while denying those rights to those who form households around the same bonds with members of the same sex?
I am eager, in equal measure, to hear something or nothing from you on the subject. :)
I do, in general, think that there is something problematically selfish about divorce, particularly where children are involved. I think that has more to do with the ease and rashness with which people marry. Ideally, whatever obstacles there may be to marriage working--whether it's addiction, sexual orientation, a disinclination towards monogamy, irreconcilable differences in worldview/lifestyle/core temperament--would be well worked out prior to taking vows. When any of those obstacles are stigmatized (e.g., when people like you insist that they are failings to be overcome rather than differences to be accounted for, accepted, and, if possible, accommodated), though, the risk of ignoring them increases.
LOOK, THERE! EVIL PURE AND SIMPLE!
You wrote, "I'd advise someone suffering from the disorder of homosexual inclinations to find a healthy approach to their sexuality before marrying."
Fine. But--to return to my earlier question--if part of a man's "healthy approach" to dealing with "the disorder of [his] homosexual inclinations" involved marrying your daughter--would you give your blessing to the marriage?
This is a simple question. Only a "yes" or a "no" is required.
This suggests that he sees it as a positive thing when a straight female marries and devotes her marriage to helping a man make "healthy sexual choices." Seattleblues has given the concept his imprimatur--at least in the case of Janna Darnelle.
He has also repeatedly gone on record to say that that there is no discrimination against gays in traditional marriage laws, because a gay man is as free as a straight man to marry a person of the opposite sex, and a lesbian is as free as a straight woman to marry a person of the opposite sex.
Moreover, he has derided the concept of gay marriage as "redefining marriage" for everbody else, therefore not leaving that as an option.
So since he is on record as (1) being against the redefinition of marriage, and (2) has suggested that gay men have the same right to marry women that straight men do, AND (3) has stated--in this thread and elsewhere--that there are really no gay people--but instead only people "who've chosen a homosexual lifestyle" (see comment @23), AND (4) stated that it is a noble thing for a woman to help a man with homosexual tendencies "make healthy choices," my original question still stands: if Seattleblues had a daughter who wanted to marry a man with "homosexual inclinations" in order to help him make healthy choices--would he give the marriage his blessing?
He still has not answered that question.
@70: "Hey, this 'my imagination trumps reality' stuff is fun."
Funny you say that, given your predilection for claiming that:
-your imagination trumps SCOTUS rulings
-your imagination trumps the overwhelming evidence regarding climatology
-your imagination trumps state anti-discrimination law
-your imagination trumps the fossil record
-your imagination trumps the combined medical knowledge of both APAs
and many other ways in which you claim that your opinions have primacy over reality. You're extremely delusional.
@73: "Not my business, unless they're trying to destroy marriage by redefinition, as with so called gay marriage."
NO, YOU MORON, IT'S STILL NOT YOUR BUSINESS.
What's with you and claiming that The Gay is out to "destroy marriage"? WHAT EXACTLY do you think will happen if gays can get gay married?
How exactly have my cousin and her partner being able to solemnize their relationship hurt you, or any other straight schmo off the street?
"See, reality isn't hard."
You seem to have plenty of trouble. no1curr
Unbelievably, this anti-gay hate group, Witherspoon, is able to operate from right on the Princeton University campus. The Southern Poverty Law Center should be looking very carefully at all of the malicious anti-LGBT hate mongering.
I can't stand people who can't face the truth, bury it under a phony marriage - then wait until kids/dependents are on the scene to finally "find themselves" - and that goes for breeders too. I'd sue the guy into the ground for being a chicken-shit dishonest asshole too weak willed to be honest with himself and admit he had no business marrying a woman in the first place.
Fucking marriage. It turns people into class A idiots.
@90 Alternate "Lord and Master" days sound hawt!
I'm open minded to the views of others. I understand that not everyone has the same background, experiences, and values as I do. I just object to people insulting their audience's intelligence by feeding them lines of reasoning that don't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny.
Allowing gays to get married hurts straights because it tells closeted gays that they don't have to stay in doomed straight relationships? Please. The implication there is that it's better to be in a doomed and empty romantic relationship with someone incapable of loving you than to amicably go separate ways so that both parties can be happy.
Don't crap in my cappuccino and tell me it's nutmeg. If you have an opinion that you want to wave in someone's face, give them the real reason for your opinion, not some half-baked bullshit that you think sounds less offensive.
Don't disappoint me, bigots. If you truly care about this issue, you'll answer the question.
They're Mormon. It is 1950. In fact it might be 1890.
I don't think "tolerate" means what you think it means.
Like duh, it wasn't that her husband left her for a man that hurt her; OK, what does that mean to her? Does she accept, understand, or acknowledge that her issues are overwhelmingly not related to her husbands sexuality?
ETc.