Whenever someone starts preaching to me about how the sex lives of gay people are sad and broken I just cheerfully point them to the tons, literally tons, of articles out there written by heterosexuals, for heterosexuals on how to fix their own broken sex lives.  If the grass is any greener on their side of the fence I’ve yet to see it.  Other then the fact that their marriages are given some security in the rule of law that ours are not, their intimate sex lives don’t seem any less difficult to manage then our own.

And believe it or not, single though I’ve been most of my life, and gay ever since…well, puberty…I read those articles now and then, mostly for clues as to what pitfalls to avoid in the event that my own sex life happens to improve.  Even though they’re written with a basic premise of gender difference in the relationship, a lot of it can I think, apply to same sex couples too.  Conversely, I think opposite sex couples could learn a thing or two from our households too.  How gender equality works in practice being one of them, but also how it is to keep things together in a hostile world.  When all you have is literally each other, and you have to find a way to make it work without the support of the world around you, then you really know what your union is made of.  The same sex couples who have made it in this world, under that kind of relentless emotional stress, are my heroes.

So anyway…I see this this CNN fluff piece about how sexual incompatibility is troubling some marriages and I start reading…

He’s a 38-year-old executive. She’s a 34-year-old homemaker. He says they never fight, and in many ways they’re compatible — but not when it comes to sex.

"It’s almost like a checklist," says Jon (who asked that his real name not be used) of their once-a-month lovemaking. The problem, he believes, is a lack of desire.

Sexually unfulfilling marriages aren’t limited to new parents or aging baby boomers with hormone imbalances. They can ensnare even the relatively young and the recently married. When they are unable to blame kids, stress or physical issues, many couples struggle unhappily to identify — and resolve — the problems behind their lackluster sex life.

Couples end up in sexually unfulfilling marriages for a variety of reasons, says Marty Klein, a licensed marriage counselor and certified sex therapist in Palo Alto, California. One reason, he says, is America’s obsession with marriage.

Laura Berman, a Chicago sex therapist and relationship expert, agrees. "We put the blinders on when we’re dating," she says. "We focus so much on the wedding, we don’t notice the warning signs."

That obsession with marriage being fueled in part, by the fundamentalist kook pews here.  Not everyone is temperamentally suited for marriage, and in any case, after you’re married is the wrong time to find out you’re not sexually compatible.  Having sex while dating and before marriage, or for that matter when marriage isn’t even a goal, isn’t unhealthy unless it’s unloving.  Much as the right hates the sex drive, it’s an important part of our being.  Just ask your gay and lesbian neighbors: It does us great harm to put sex in the closet.

In more ways then one.  As I was scanning down that CNN article, I saw this on the page…

When your spouse announces he’s gay…  Which, wasn’t one of those Surprising reasons you’re not having sex either as it turned out.   A lot of right wing pulpit thumpers say that sex before marriage is responsible for weakening the institution of marriage, but it isn’t.  It’s the padded cell they’ve put marriage into on the one hand, and sex on the other, that’s weakened it.  There is nothing wrong with sex that is truly loving and joyful.  The more gay people know that and accept that there is nothing wrong with them and that their sex drives are as legitimate and as beautiful as those of heterosexuals, the fewer surprised spouses there’ll be.  And the more intimately couples know each other before they tie the knot, the more likely they’ll go into it with that beautiful body and soul union that can make a marriage endure anything.

I’ve seen it happen.  Maybe someday it’ll happen to me.  If the pulpit thumpers would just get the fuck off our backs and out of our beds, it might happen to more of us.