Monkey see, monkey do

Family Blend is one of the best blogs. It always makes me smile and occasionally teary-eyed. The blogeurs (you know, like auteurs, bloggers with style!) are a couple of well-adjusted, handsome, loving gay men that cope with their lives (children, exes, Mormon families, friends) with honesty and humor. I seriously look up to these guys. They are what I want to someday be. I only wish that I had role models like this when I was coming to terms with my sexuality.

I know things would have been much easier knowing that there were gay mormons (ex and otherwise) in healthy, loving relationships. Of course the only role models I had were those "gay" mormons who lived by themselves and seemed lonely. You never knew if they were gay or not cause that isn't talked about and you never knew about the, as they call them now, "mixed-orientation" marriages. So once I realized that I would never be able to marry a woman honestly, I had the Sheri Dew lifestyle to look forward to. That really was it. No one else to see and emulate. I was scared shitless.

Of course I know better now. I've experienced how love shared with a man can make me feel whole and good and not dirty and unhappy(although being in your 30's when you realize it is a bit late in my estimation) . I just wish that I had been able to see that earlier. There is a tendency among the members of the Church to feel that they have a monopoly on happiness. The gospel is where TRUE happiness (whatever that means) is found and those people who don't have the gospel and look happy aren't TRULY happy. It's a condescending attitude that most people in any group have I guess. And as a true believer I shared this worldview.

My folks always say that they just want me to be happy. Which is not as simple as it sounds because from Mormon parents the subtext of happy is "living the gospel". There's the disconnect. For me to be happy is to live in a state which my family considers the opposite of happiness. And when it seems that I'm happy, well, I'm not TRULY happy in their eyes. Ah the joys of families.

I'm sure the Family Blend guys aren't supermen and I don't mean to put a pedestal under them. I'm having a good enough time reveling in their ordinariness. I just want to warn them. I'm watching you, rooting for you, hoping every joy in life for you, cause every time you win I win too.