The annual conference of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministry in Long Beach, California, was attended by a mixture of clergy, LGBT people and their parents, and one straight spouse, formerly married to a gay man – Dr. Amity Buxton. More than 160 people were present at the plenary session to hear Coadjutor Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento give the opening address on the topic of love. As was reported in the press, 5 people walked out when it became apparent that the Bishop’s talk was not about love in general, but about sex. Specifically, he stated that gay and lesbian people must remain chaste and sexual activity between them is sinful. By the end of the address, the audience erupted in anger. Within minutes, however, a board member rushed to the stage and invited the Bishop to stay and listen to personal stories of individuals in the gathering. One by one, nine volunteers walked to the front of the hall, and took the microphone to tell their “lived experience” directly to the Bishop as he sat in the front row.
All this has been reported in print elsewhere. What has not been reported is that the lone one straight spouse in the audience was one of the speakers. Amity summarizes her response:
”I recounted my husband’s decision to marry as a good Irish Catholic because it was the right thing to do and would make him happy, even though he had a gay lover unbeknownst to me at the time. I told of his gradual depression and physical ailments that developed over twenty-five years, our divorce and annulment, and his eventual death alone. At the end, I stated strongly that this painful experience was why I will not stop working toward making sure that no one else has to go through what he, I, and our children had to suffer.”
Amity later participated in focus groups and three other plenary sessions, informing everyone in each session of the invaluable resource that the Straight Spouse Network provides for straight spouses, current or former of LGBT people and the importance of having this for our families. It was a revelation to most attendees that straight spouses have a support organization, much less need support.
At the final bilingual concelebrated Mass, Amity was gratified to hear the priest who delivered the homily validate the importance of straight spouses. He said that one new thing he had learned at this conference was the existence and unique perspective of straight spouses and of the work that Amity had been doing to provide support for them for over 20 years.
What stands out from this report is in the last statement – the priest had only then learned of the existence of straight spouses. With all the attention focused on California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, many churches are unaware of the existence of straight spouses. If they were aware of us, a portion of the focus, energy and money allotted for the defense of marriage might be allotted for resources to help straight spouses and our families deal with profound moral and spiritual dilemmas. Resources such as counseling, spiritual healing, renewal, focus on keeping us connected to the communities of faith rather than shunning us, ignoring us until we leave, or responding to our questions and concerns with lectures on that particular denomination’s teachings about our partner’s homosexuality, rather than providing pastoral ministry that addresses our needs.
Pastoral response to us and our families is a challenge for many clergy of all faiths and political affiliations, especially when our existence is not acknowledged. The Straight Spouse Network (SSN) is a resource for clergy to learn of our needs and perspectives. We encourage all communities of faith to plan for appropriate and ongoing pastoral response to straight spouses and their families. SSN can help them do so.
As a Roman Catholic in Exile (because I was shunned and ignored after publicly acknowledging that my spouse is gay) I searched for a church/denomination that would acknowledge my pain and my contributions. I was lucky, the pastor at my local MCC church was himself married to a straight women at a previous point in his life. He acknowledged my journey and my pain and encouraged, even pushed me to expand my horizons to reach out to others. While he has since moved on to another congregation, our current pastor is thrilled to have me as part of the ministry team. I am able to speak with GLBT people in our congregation who were married about their spouse and help them acknowledge the challenges facing the entire family.
In the past year, I have spoken to our Regional Elder and other visiting pastors about being a straight spouse. Many of them were previously married to straight spouses and acknowledge that more needs to be done for straight spouses. It is my eventual goal that my new church includes straight spouses and the children of mixed orientation families as one of their target groups for ministry.
I left the RC church ages ago for my own reasons. But I left the Episcopal church last year because I got tired of being invisible, and being treated as an embarrassment. In a church were there is such contentious and open discussion of gay marriage, gay clergy, etc, straight spouses have no voice and are pushed to the side, until they prove to be useful in one side or the other of an ongoing debate. That’s not Christian, and it certainly is not ministry.
I’m currently a Methodist. Not perfect, but no one runs away from me when I acknowledge what has happened to me.
Good luck with your ministry to all our families.
When I read this article, I realized that I wanted my church, the Episcopal Church to give me an answer. I had already sent a letter to the Bishop via one of his assistants whose name my rector had given me, asking that an announcement about Straight Spouse meetings be placed in the Diocesan newspaper. This was more than a month ago. I forwarded the article to both my rector and the Bishop’s assistant asking specifically how the Diocese would respond to the Straight Spouses in our parishes. I received an acknowledgement that my e-mail had been passed on to the Bishops. I will telephone if I don’t get a response in a few weeks. They must understand that I expect them to actively seek out men and women who may need help.
What is your rector doing? What is your vestry doing? What are your lay pastoral ministers doing? What is your local council of churches doing? If they are pretending that you are the only person this has ever happened to, and telling you to let it go, then they need to be doing much much more.
Perhaps you should bring this blog to their attention. And the blogs in the blogroll, which tell the stories of our families. Then they’ll know that you’re not alone, and that they need to do much much more than find ways to keep you invisible and inaudible.
I think the reason that pastors and some churches have trouble with this issue is that in “respecting the dignity of every human being” and supporting GLBT persons, they have forgotten that other family members are involved, and then they feel guilty that they are not prepared to deal with them. To admit that another person is going to be hurt by this violates the “dignity” canons they so proudly proclaim. And so they justify their position by ignoring the straight spouses and families’ pain, running from it, deciding that the familie’s grief is not as valid as the Gay’s right to dignity (“you’ll get over it”) or by looking confused that you just don’t accept the gay spouse’s right to that dignity. In reality seminaries don’t teach pastors how to deal with subject. That is a fertile field for this network to deal with. Pastors are what there seminaries mold them to be. Pastors, who are taught to be long-sighted on most issues, are short-sighted on this. They just don’t see the stigma’s, the pain, the confusion, and the life changing dynamics that face the spouse and family of GBLT persons.
Same sex attracted folks often shouldn’t even consider marrying (absolutely not without a substantial period of living chastely first, practicing the Sacraments regularly if Catholic–in some cases this will greatly help or resolve the SSA problem), and in marriages where one spouse has disordered sexual attraction sometimes the spouses must live in continence. These are certainly difficult situations and everyone should have a lot of compassion. We are all called to chastity. Why would people be surprised, let alone angry, that any Bishop would tell a Catholic gathering the Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are sinful? This is actually something that people already know.