I was raised in a country that does not support homosexuality. In the days when I was young, it was much worse. Today, socially, among some classes of peoples they look the other way. But there is no support for gay marriage, or abortion.
I have a cousin, the daughter of my mother’s younger sister. She was very obviously gay to me from when she was a young teen, impulsive, heart broken, angry. Her focus, or targets, were classmates and when I intervened a teacher who was in a sexual way with her. I had to intervene. I took my cousin and brow beat her into agreeing to marry me. Marriage between cousins is allowed, even marriage between a man older than her and even if she is still under the age of eighteen. The question asked of her was phrased, ‘you do want to get married, right?’ She was seventeen.
She was not responsive to me. Obedient to her daily chores yes. But not to me. Our sex life started horribly wrong. I had to impose myself on her. She spit on me, but I managed to impregnate her. I had a drive to keep her pregnant, and she remained pregnant for most of the first five years of our marriage. She has four children and she had to turn her attention to caring for them. She had stopped resisting, and allowed sex, but never participated herself. She was there, get on, get off, turn over and go to sleep.
In one moment of clarity she told me that what was done was done, she had no choice about it, but she couldn’t turn back the clock and she wasn’t going resist the marriage. She began to participate socially as a married wife, to care for her home and children as a mother and wife. To use my name socially and legally. She did not offer herself, never has but it was no longer a situation where I had to impose myself on her. Just don’t hold her down.
We have been married for over forty years. She has an active social life, and some of the women are in my opinion lesbians who have lived a straight life. They project on each other. They are best friends, and they socialize together. In a car confession, when she just had to talk she confessed as much. They are support group for each other now that they are much older. Each with their own story to tell. None look back and would have chosen to live unmarried, and they counsel younger lesbians to accept their fate and get married and have families, the other path is wrought with pain and misery, poverty and the path has no light at the end. My wife today has thanked me several times. She did not like it, but her other path was worse.
Our country does not accept gay marriage, or abortion. It is hostile to the gay community. For lesbian girls there is a tent that they can enter, marriage and children. For gay men it is much worse. There is an inability for them to stay quiet, and blend in. And that makes them exposed to both legal and extralegal penalties. I am ambivalent, I do not support abortion, it is an abhorrent choice. I support my wife and her fellow lesbians reaching out to young women, accept the sacrament of marriage, bear children, make a home. The other path is a dead end. A worthless choice.
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