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Why Gay Mormon Men Married to Women Are Fighting Gay Marriage

A group of Mormon men filed a brief with the Supreme Court that federally recognized same-sex unions would make their own marriages, to women, "meaningless." OK.

Some Mormons who like Star Wars and who may or may not be married and/or gay. Photo via Flickr user Wm Jas

Groups who oppose gay marriage are increasingly fighting a losing battle, but no one is waging war on behalf of penis-vagina couplings more entertainingly than a bunch of gay Mormon men who just asked the Supreme Court to consider the idea that same-sex marriage would make their marriages to their wives "meaningless."

Right now 70 percent of Americans live in a place where gay marriage is legal, and SCOTUS will begin hearing arguments about whether it should be a federally recognized right on April 28. The Mormons who filed the brief think if that happens then it codifies the idea that "only same-sex marriage can bring gays and lesbians the personal and family fulfillment that is the desire of the human heart." They call that message "one-size-fits-all" and "false."

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It should be noted that the Church of Latter Day Saints has had a rather bizarre relationship with its gay members since 2012. That's when church leaders softened their stance and launched the site MormonandGay.com in support of the idea that same-sex-attraction (SSA, as they call it) is OK, as long as the men who experience it marry ladies.

They also started another site that year—LDSVoicesofHope.org—as a platform for SSA men who've supposedly suppressed their desires to share their message of hope. The site is registered to Jeff Bennion, a personal injury attorney, and North Star, which describes itself as "a place of community for Latter-day Saints seeking support and resources addressing sexual orientation or gender identity."

The amicus brief filed to the Supreme Court is basically a collection of essays taken from LDSVoicesOfHope.org, and Bennion's is one of them. "While they do not have a choice about their attractions, they do have a choice about their relationships," the introduction reads. "And rather than choose the culturally acceptable and popularly celebrated 'traditional' same-sex relationship, these same-sex attracted men instead have chosen marriage to a woman."

Apparently, Bennion always wanted a wife and kids and was full of despair about his gay attractions. But then he met Tanya, and forced himself to work "backward" from emotional intimacy to physical attraction. Their eight-year marriage is based on a kind of love, he wrote, that "isn't often sung about."

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Related: Watch our documentary, "The Mexican-Mormon War":

There's also Joshua Johanson, who struggled with being gay until he met Alyssa at a dance and discovered she loved him "not in spite of his attractions, but because of them." At first, he thought the whole being gay thing might pose some difficulties in the bedroom, but, "I was wrong," Johnason wrote. "Our sex life has been amazing from day one. There was no awkwardness of need for adjustment. It was just pure and beautiful"

Fewer and fewer people these days believe that you can simply choose to not be gay, or change your sexual orientation through prayer—and perhaps because of this, the gay-but-married Mormons write in the brief that they aren't denying anything.

"Rather, amici fully accept the reality of their same-sex attractions and fully affirm their individual selfworth, just as they are," the brief reads. "But they also attest that their attractions do not dictate their relationships."

Oh, OK.

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