Throughout my life, I’ve tried to be as honest as I could – to myself and to others. I have always known at some level that I was attracted to men. So why didn’t I come to grips with my sexuality until ten years into our marriage? It’s easy to look back using today’s standards and judge one’s actions taken in the past.
Today we live in a world where some churches welcome the LGBTQ community, some high schools have LGBTQ support groups, some states have laws protecting LGBTQ folks from discrimination, and some parents lovingly embrace their LGBTQ children when they come out. In today’s world, why would any young gay man not admit this to himself and others? How would any gay man marry a woman, have children and keep his thoughts to himself? I believe it’s because of a key word in my sentences above – “some.”
I believe that even now, most churches, most high schools, over half of our states, and heaven knows how many parents don’t accept or support their LGBTQ parishioners, students, citizens, or children. In fact, in most of these situations those people and organizations (including, sadly, my own Catholic religion) are openly and proudly hostile to us – labeling us as unnatural, immoral, contagious, and condemned.
And when I was a young man, practically no people or organizations accepted gay people.
So, imagine myself in my early 20’s and madly in love with my soon-to-be wife filling out an obligatory pre-marital inventory as a part of counseling to be done with the priest who would officiate at our wedding. I happily and easily responded to every statement. Then there was one that caused me to pause. It read “Homosexual tendencies in one of us has me worried.”
If I had told the truth and answered “agree” it could have opened up a discussion that I wasn’t prepared to have. I couldn’t even explain these feelings to myself. How could I have discussed them with Debbie and a priest? I loved her completely. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I wasn’t so attracted to men that I wasn’t attracted to women. And I was very sexually attracted to Debbie – and we were so compatible. I just knew we belonged together. If I had answered, “disagree” or even “unsure,” I’d have been lying. I took a deep breath, and with a little nervousness, checked “yes.”
A couple of weeks later, Debbie and I met with our priest. We talked about many topics. At one point he said something like, “Vince, it looks as if you indicated that you have had sexual attraction to men. Is that true?” I said, “Yes.” He proceeded with something like, “So, are you feeling those attractions right now?” I said something like, “Well….. no.” Because I wasn’t. He then said something like, “OK, well that’s normal, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
That was it. No more discussion. I’m sure I breathed a sigh of relief.
Priests back then – most likely counselors in general – weren’t prepared to have that kind of discussion. In fact, and unfortunately, 33 years later this same priest was placed on a list of credibly accused sexual offenders by the Catholic church for allegedly having sex with a young man around the timeframe of our wedding. So, if that accusation is true, most likely he was experiencing his own form of sexuality struggles.
I write this to explain what “being as honest as one can” might have looked like. I never meant to mislead Debbie. I never meant to lie to her or to myself. Maybe if I’d been more self-aware, maybe if the world I lived in was even a bit more tolerant, Debbie and I would have broken off the engagement. As I write this blog, even the thought of that makes me cry. I cry for the most beautiful love I would have missed.
P.S.
Research reveals that our memories are far from accurate. Our blog is memoir, not a historical recording. This said, a couple of years ago, I was going through some old files. I ran across our actual pre-marital inventory. Take a look at the picture. The graph shows the level of agreement between Debbie’s answers and mine. You’ll see a graphical dip at the “S” or, per the key provided, the sex category. This was largely due to my response to the homosexuality statement.