How to Support Same-Sex Marriage Without Throwing Single Straight People Under the Bus

When it comes to the topic of gay Mormons, I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen some variant of this conversation:

Defender of gay Mormons: “It’s unrealistic and unfair for the church to expect gay Mormons to give up all hope of companionship and remain celibate for their whole lives.”

Defender of the church: “It might be a difficult thing to ask, but it’s doable. Look at all the  single straight people who also have to live the law of chastity!”

Defender of gay Mormons: “Those two situations aren’t at all parallel, because at least straight people have the hope of marriage.”

I have some reservations about the implicit framework usually underlying these conversations, and lately I’m feeling more and more of a need to re-think the entire discussion. I feel like I bring a somewhat unique perspective to this topic, given my personal history. I’m not one of those people who knew she was gay from an early age; I didn’t even come out to myself until my early 30s. (Looking back, I can see several reasons for this, including the extent to which I was engaged in self-destructive behaviors during my teens and twenties, and was largely disconnected from my physical experience. I think I actually felt some relief that I didn’t seem to be attracted to boys, simply because the experience of my friends suggested that it could really make your life complicated. But I didn’t stop to consider whether I might be feeling attracted to anyone else. I mostly just avoided the issue.)

Because of this, I have some experience of what it means to be a single straight person in the church who is dubious that marriage is going to happen. I’m not going to claim to completely understand that situation, given that I wasn’t dealing with things like having sexual thoughts about men and feeling ashamed and confused because of a cultural expectation that women were supposed to be objects of desire, and not those who felt it (an experience reported by many of my female friends raised in the church). I was pretty shut down when it came to anything like that. But I do think I have at least some sense of what it means socially to be a single straight woman in the church who suspects she might be aging out of the possibility of marriage. So that’s one perspective I bring to this subject, in addition to the perspective of someone who’s spent the last decade grappling with what it means to be gay.

One of my concerns with how conversations about this subject often unfold is the tendency I see on both sides to basically throw single straight people under the bus. On the side of the church defenders, the straight singles commonly get used as a sort of prop, a convenient source of evidence that people who aren’t gay are being asked to do something hard, too, so you can’t say that the church is being unfair in its expectations of gay people. Quite honestly, this enrages me. The church thoroughly marginalizes single people; its track record of including them as full members in the community is incredibly poor. To suddenly demonstrate awareness of the difficult situation of singles, when there has previously been so little institutional concern for their situation, solely to rationalize what’s being asked of gay people, is incredibly obnoxious. Additionally, the argument that “we treat straight single people terribly and they’re putting up with it, so why can’t gay people just put up with it too?” has always struck me as a little bizarre. If the best selling point you have for gay people is to tell them that they too can have a church experience just as wonderful as that of single straight people, who are regularly relegated to the fringes and viewed as less than full adults, and most of whom find the experience so intolerable that they go inactive, you’ve got some work to do.

On the other side, though, I think that in their understandable desire to emphasize the plight of gay people, advocates for gay rights can be guilty of being overly dismissive of the challenges faced by single straight people in the church. I absolutely agree that the situations are qualitatively different, and I’ll get to the reasons for that in a minute. But I’m not interested in any kind of suffering Olympics in which everyone competes to see who has it the worst. And I want to acknowledge that while it’s true that straight single people have options that gay people don’t, the reality is that there are any number of older straight single people in the church whose chances of marrying are slim enough that they’ve resigned themselves to a life of celibacy, and given up hope of companionship. For many people that’s not a small thing, and for anyone to suggest that it’s not that big of a deal because they could still theoretically meet someone trivializes the difficulties of being in that position.

In addition, let’s not forget the gender piece. Active single straight members are overwhelmingly female (this is precisely why many women look at the numbers and think marriage might not be in the cards for them). And while this might be slowly changing, for a long time church discourse about gay people regularly assumed that such people were male. To give just one example, the Oaks-Wickman interview included this comment from then-Elder Oaks: “persons who have cleansed themselves of any transgression and who have shown their ability to deal with these feelings or inclinations and put them in the background, and feel a great attraction for a daughter of God and therefore desire to enter marriage and have children and enjoy the blessings of eternity — that’s a situation when marriage would be appropriate.” (I’m assuming that he doesn’t mean that if some like me feels attraction for a daughter of God, marriage would be appropriate.) It’s troubling to me that when lifelong celibacy was just something that single women were being asked to do, neither apologists nor many progressives seemed to feel like it was that big of a deal. It seems like in many cases it only showed up on the radar as an onerous requirement once it became clear that men were being affected. Ugh.

So how can we talk about this whole thing differently? Many advocates of same-sex marriage end up conceptualizing marriage as the most amazing thing ever, perhaps even the most important opportunity a person can have, in order to bolster their case that it’s unjust to deny such an opportunity to anyone. In a Mormon worldview, this works especially well, because of the LDS belief that marriage is the highest ordinance of them all, and in fact necessary for exaltation. When people point out that Mormons aren’t like other traditions that see celibacy as a legitimate life path, that Mormonism sees marriage as in some sense the very meaning of life, they’re raising a valid point—the church has ventured into strange theological waters in suddenly deciding that celibacy is optimal for anyone. I can certainly understand why people want to bring this up; I’ve done it myself. But more and more, I think it’s a problematic move. Because I think the idea that marriage is the One True Life path for everyone is something worth seriously questioning. As strongly as I support same-sex marriage, I don’t want to use that narrative to make that case—partly because the idea that if you’re not married then your life is basically meaningless has left a lot of devastation in its wake.

I’ve also recently come across opponents of same-sex marriage making the point that you can live without a sexual relationship, and accusing those who support SSM of elevating it to some sort of basic human right. Since humans can actually get by without this, they assert, SSM supporters are on shaky ground. And I actually agree that no one has a right to sex, or to a romantic relationship. This point has in fact been driven home to me recently as I’ve learned more about the incel community: aggrieved (straight) men who think they do have that right, who see themselves as entitled to both sex and romantic relationships, and who lash out at women who don’t do their duty and provide those things. Clearly this notion is worth questioning.

So how can we talk about this all differently? Is there a way of supporting same-sex marriage that doesn’t make marriage into the be all-end all of life? One comparison that’s occurred to me as I’ve considered this question is to suffrage. You can live a happy, healthy, flourishing life without having the vote. You might be upset that you don’t get any official say in who gets elected, but that wouldn’t by any means make your life intolerable to the point of being unlivable. This reality, however, would be an absurd reason to deny the vote to a group of people. Obviously there are differences between marriage rights and voting rights, but my point here is simply that saying that people can survive without something isn’t a very strong case for cutting them off from it—especially if you can make a case for benefits that would come from providing that opportunity.

And for me, the question of marriage rights goes much deeper than the issue of, will I ever be partnered with someone, or will I spend my life alone? It goes to a more core question of, does the society in which I live see me as a full human being, one with the same dignity and rights as other human beings? This is where I see the situation of single straight people and single gay people as not being parallel. I think the argument about which group gets to at least hope that their situation might change often misses something crucial. I don’t think that gay teenagers are at a higher suicide risk simply because they see themselves as being doomed to be alone their whole lives (as bleak as that might feel). I think it involves something deeper. Gay people are told again and again that who they are is fundamentally wrong, and in need of fixing. They’re told that for them, wanting romantic and sexual connection is like wanting to be an alcoholic, or to shoplift, or to abuse people—that these are fallen desires that need to be overcome. It’s hard to explain how destructive this message is. You’re not just being told that you need to give up any hope of partnership; you’re being told that you are defective in a basic way that makes you different from most of the people around you, and that the only moral option for you is to conceptualize your desires for sexual connection as evil, and something to be overcome. You’ve not being asked to bridle your passions; you’ve being asked to eradicate, or at the very least, ignore them. That doesn’t just impact your thinking about possible partnership; it deeply affects your very sense of who you are.

When it comes to same-sex marriage, then, I don’t want to defend it on the grounds that marriage is the One True Life Path. I want to defend it on the grounds of human dignity, and equal opportunity. No, I don’t think a sexual relationship is a human right, or that life is unlivable in the absence of romantic partnership. But I still want gay people to have the same opportunities as their straight sisters and brothers. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say that “happiness” is an inalienable right. It says that “the pursuit of happiness” is. Gay people are no more entitled than anyone else to have the universe magically send a partner to their door. Not all gay people even want that, any more than all straight people do. But they are entitled to look if they so desire—and, if they find a partner that they want to spend their lives with, to have the same legal protections and recognition as anyone else. I don’t think you have to make marriage into the meaning of life in order to make a case for that.

(Sidenote: I’m a little tired of people speaking in awed tones about the sacrifices made by gay Mormons who’ve opted for celibacy. The effusive gushing about what heroes these people are, coming from people who flat-out admit that they could never do such a thing themselves, is eerily similar to the dynamic in which men go on and on about how amazing it is that the women in their lives are so self-sacrificing and give up everything for others. Yes, it’s amazing—and, let’s own it, highly convenient for the ones who aren’t doing quite as much sacrificing. I have considerable respect for my gay sisters and brothers who’ve opted to stay in the church and follow church teachings, just as I have respect for the ones who’ve decided differently. But I want to push back against speaking in ways that perpetuate a system which is sustained by the expectation that one particular group of marginalized people will  make heroic sacrifices to keep it going. I’ve developed a lot of reservations over the years about the discourse of sacrifice, about what a beautiful and noble thing it is, when almost inevitably the straight white males who are running things are not the ones who are making those sacrifices. And bringing this back to the point of my post, this kind of discourse also reinforces the problematic idea that single people of all stripes are otherworldly creatures, martyrs, objects of both pity and awe, rather than just other human beings with complicated lives and particular challenges and basic needs.)

One more point that I want to mention is that having the legal opportunity to marry, of having that be a theoretical option even if you have no current dating prospects and are not sure if you ever will—that actually matters. As a Mormon, I followed church teachings and remained celibate. Now that I’m an Episcopalian—guess what, I’m still celibate. The dating scene is intimidating, and I’m still figuring out exactly what I want. In that sense, there’s a way in which my life has changed very little. I didn’t have a romantic partner before, and I don’t have one now. And yet despite that, there’s a way in which everything feels completely different. I could get married, and not only would my church not kick me out—they’d celebrate with me. I cannot tell you how huge that feels to me. It’s not just that such a thing could theoretically happen someday—it’s the impact that this worldview has on me right now, today. It’s the feeling of being seen as a full human being with all that goes along with that, rather than a mistake to be fixed in the next life. Even if I end up single for the rest of my life, this is a hugely significant change for me. I honestly don’t think that marriage (whether straight or gay) is the path for everyone, and I don’t support same-sex marriage because I think that life can’t be meaningful in the absence of romantic partnership. But I do desperately wish that all of my gay sisters and brothers could have the experience of being affirmed as a child of God as the person they are rather than being seen as a creation that went wrong somewhere, and of having a sense of multiple life possibilities being open to them.