Big Love?

I watched an episode of the new series on SBS tonight, Big Love. For those of my multitudinous readers who have not heard of the series, it is basically about a familiy of polygamists that live in a suburban town in America. I guess it is based on the pockets of fundamentalist polygamist mormons that exist in pockets in places like Arizona and Salt Lake City.
Anyway the show brought up to me an interesting point. There was this scene where a poligamist who had many wives and was a sort of spiritual leader for the fundamentalists is being interviewed by a paper. They are asking him questions about the type of life he leads and the legal implications, and he says "if the American government can give rights to homosexuals living in relationships, why cant they allow us to live our lives as we chose and leave us in peace?"
Good point. I tend to agree.

Personally I dont think that i could be a second or third or tenth wife in a polygamist family. I like attention too much. But if the women are consenting and able to cope with sharing a husband, if the families are healthy and happy, then why all the fuss? Kids with a large loving support network, siblings to play with and loving parents. As long as it isnt all child brides and dirty old men, I really cant see the problem with people living the way they want.

I think we spend too much time worrying about other people's lives. We care too much about what religious book they are reading, who they are sleeping with and what they believe in. Just because you dont think having two wives is right for you doesnt mean that it is wrong for Joe Bloggs and his wives Betty Cathy and Ursula Bloggs. We are all different. We all have different morals and beliefs. We are all most comfortable in different situations.

So I say GO ON! HAVE YOUR WIVES! And let me have my man, Pink and JD from SCRUBS. I think that is right for me.

Sexuality

I dont know what makes someone gay and someone else not gay. I know that some people are gay and some people are not.

I know that for some reason it is such a horrible thing, that people are condemned and isolated by their families and loved ones because they are gay. I know that sometimes being gay means being deceitful, I know that sometimes it means that you have to do one thing to pretend that you arent doing another.

I was "seeing" a man once, who was gay, or he thought he was, or he wasnt sure. All I know is that we never had a real relationship, but he let everyone in his family and in his extended group of friends think we were. Why? So that he did not have to face their pain and disappointment when they found out the truth.

I dont blame him for this. His family were rurals, from the country, and he had 3 older brothers and a younger sister, the boys were all working in the mining industry, married and with children and his sister engaged to a man, a miner. Their realm and his truth were not compatible so he pulled me into his lies so that they could sleep well at night.

I lost contact with him, somewhere down the tracks when he moved interstate and I moved on with my life. I did hear at one stage that he was living with a woman, in the country town he grew up in. I remembered how it was, being with him and knowing that there were little secrets, and it was sad to think that he still had not faced the truth of his sexuality. I still know his truth, I have known it since the night he confessed with tears and heartbreak, and I know that he is still living a lie.

It is unfair, I think. It is unfair that I can profess my love for my other half so proudly and openly, simply for the reason that I chose to love a man and not another woman. It is unfair that this man I once new has to live a lie, or half a lie, and always have the truth eating him up inside. All because he does not feel how I do, and does not conform to the apparent norm. What is normal anyway?