Resources

Only recently has the topic of mixed-orientation marriages attracted much attention in the therapeutic community. Many therapists are unfamiliar with the particular dynamics of such marriages.

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While a number of resources are available to the gay or lesbian spouse who comes out, until recently the straight spouse could find little help in dealing with the feelings of shock, hurt, anger, powerlessness, grief, and self-blame that are typical reactions to learning that one's partner is gay or lesbian.

In 1986, however, PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) formed a task force for straight spouses of gay men and lesbians. Jane Vennard, former wife of a gay man, organized a cluster of regional contacts and a handful of support groups for wives and husbands whose mates had come out as gay or lesbian. Since then the Straight Spouse Network has grown to become an international organization devoted to supporting the heterosexual spouses of glbtq partners and mixed-orientation couples.

In addition to facilitating support groups, SSN also provides information about family issues and mixed-orientation marriages to professionals, community organizations, and the media.

The English website, www.marriedgay.org, also provides information for married men who are gay or bisexual, as well as for their wives and partners.

Although until recently rejected by most sexologists as a distinct sexual identity, bisexuality is gradually becoming recognized and studied as such.

If the closet has served to institutionalize homosexuality as shameful and inferior vis-à-vis the legitimate heterosexual culture, it has also provided a space of possibility for subversive sexual and political acts.

"Coming out" is the revelation or acknowledgment that one is a member of a sexual minority, a process that is at once personal and social and often political.

In recent years there has been a push for glbtq-sensitive counselor training and glbtq-affirmative counseling, which, although occurring slowly and encountering resistance, marks a significant move in a positive direction.

Many glbtq people reject a fixed definition of family imposed by society, and instead claim the right to define their own families as they choose.

Glbtq family therapy is a relatively new field that merges gay-affirmative therapy with family systems theory; its goal is to help glbtq people create and maintain healthy families.

Sexual orientation indicates erotic attraction, whether toward people of the same gender (homosexual), the opposite gender (heterosexual), or both (bisexual).

Straight men who have sex with men do so for a number of reasons, but in general such activity is about physical release and sexual behaviors, not about attraction or desire for another man.

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), an American organization of some 460 affiliated chapters and 80,000 members, works to support glbtq people and their loved ones.

In his personal life, American actor Anthony Perkins often seemed as tortured as the troubled characters he played on film, hiding--and perhaps despising--his true nature while desperately seeking happiness and "normality."

The Right Reverend Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to be consecrated a bishop of the Episcopal Church, has earned strong support from members of his diocese, but has become a lightning rod for conservatives within the Anglican Communion.