Gay Conservative Dating
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The Israeli news outlet Ynet reported earlier this week on a new dating site for gay and lesbian Jews seeking to couple up and have children together. So far, around 50 people have signed up, ranging from ultra-Orthodox to conservative Jews.
The site's founder, who goes by the name Eran, reportedly started the underground website after a Facebook post he wrote seeking a platonic wife went viral last year, inspiring friends and strangers alike to contact him in search of a similar relationship. It appears these people acknowledge their LGBTQ identity isn't a 'phase,' but want to stay in the closet nonetheless.
'At first, I tried to help. I made a list and even set some people up,' Eran said to Ynet. 'But, as the requests multiplied, I decided that it was in everybody's interest to make a framework for it and give people a place where they could find the kind of relationship that they're looking for.'
People on Eran's site have wildly diverse expectations for the arrangement, ranging from an open policy on extramarital affairs to users, like 'Seeking Truth,' who wrote this messageaccording to Ynet: 'I'm looking for a woman who doesn't want to follow her orientation, but rather wants to make a real and Jewish home. I'm not looking for a woman who's interested in extra-marital liaisons!'
Israeli Jews have little hope of obtaining religious gay marriage at home with their actual partners, since marriage law falls under the domain of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. For this reason, many Israeli couples of all orientations go abroad to get married, a partnership recognized as 'civil marriage' when they return to Israel. Yet the idea of Israel's religious law accepting LGBTQ couples is still a distant pipe dream.
Ron Yosef, an activist who founded the Israeli LGBTQ organization Hod for religious Jews, told Mic he knows Eran but has mixed feelings about his matchmaking project. 'This is like turning away from the issue, for yourself and for the community,' Yosef said in a phone interview.
'It was a common practice [for LGBTQ men to seek heterosexual marriages] until 2008 when Hod was founded. We started talking about the issue and demanding answers from rabbis... For many years Jewish people [in Israel] had no other option.'
A Hod survey in 2014 estimated that up to two-thirds of gay ultra-Orthodox men in Israel still marry women. It helps shield them from homophobia and also provides their families with all the benefits given to parents the state officially recognizes as 'religious Jews.'
Even if those estimates are generous, the stigma associated with being LGBTQ in Israel is still widespread. Last summer, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli man stabbed and killed several people at the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade.
Hod is now at the forefront of working with rabbis to negotiate religious laws surrounding LGBTQ identity and relationships. By 2013, more than 123 Orthodox rabbis in Israel and abroad had signed the community charter in progress, which they call the 'Document of Principles.' The document argues that coercing LGBTQ people into heterosexual marriages degrades the act of marriage itself and emphasizes the importance of accepting queer people in spiritual communities.
Yosef believes it's the responsibility of individual spiritual leaders to explore how people of faith can honor religious law in a loving gay relationship. 'I don't see the Rabbinate [official legal body of rabbis] or the Knesset [Israeli parliament] changing it or allowing gay marriage,' Yosef said. But helping people apply ancient traditions to modern life 'is the role of rabbis.'
'Living a dual life will, in my opinion, usually cause more harm than good.'
This phenomenon isn't unique to Israel. Researchers in Utah who surveyed 1,612 LGBTQ Mormon men in heterosexual marriages found over half of the relationships ended in divorce. Researchers at Qingdao University have also estimated that around 16 million gay Chinese men were married to women, the Independent reported in 2013. Shanghai's biggest gay dating site, inlemon.cn, even started its own marriage market in 2010 because of the high demand for these 'sham marriages,' prompting the launch of Chinese apps like Queers and iHomo to help LGBTQ Chinese people find heterosexual marriage partners.
Even in the United States, 'sham marriages' are prevalent in religious communities, though there's no reliable data to suggest how common they are. Author Rick Clemons was married to a woman for 13 years before he came out as gay. He now works as a self-described 'life strategist' helping LGBTQ men come out.
'This isn't all about sex,' Clemons said in a phone interview. 'How different is [a sexless 'sham marriage'] from a [sexless] heterosexual marriage? There are lots of sexless marriages out there in the world... but living a dual life will, in my opinion, usually cause more harm than good.'
Social worker and family therapist Naomi Mark, who works extensively with Jewish communities in New York, agreed that secrecy is harmful to couples, even if they both know about each other's orientation.
'I would never recommend... a lifelong commitment to secrecy,' Mark said in a phone interview. 'Marriage and intimacy are challenging enough, and complex enough ... I'm not saying it can't ever be done, that this would never work, but I would never suggest that anyone do it.'
Despite the psychological risks, this practice is still prevalent in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community the world. In a 2013 Thought Catalogarticle about being queer in Brooklyn, New York, J.E. Reich pointed out how communities still venerate teachings from esteemed rabbis who encouraged LGBTQ Jews to seek heterosexual marriages.
Meanwhile in Israel, Yosef believes helping gay men marry women is a step backwards, stalling progress for both the individual and the community at-large.
'Sex is holiness, marriage is a unique relationship,' he said. 'I know dozens of people who got married to a woman...it developed a lot of problems...many of these couples eventually get divorced or cheat on their wives and they [the wives] don't know about it. If this is the meaning of marriage, it's a little bit bullshit.'
I knew I was gay when I was eight years old, at least subconsciously. That was the first time I had that feeling, the one deep in my chest that took me decades to understand, for a boy named Ben at summer camp, and his deep blue eyes.
I didn’t know that I was a political conservative for many more years, until I came of age in an era of political correctness and resurgent socialism, developments that pushed me away from modern liberalism. When I realized I was both gay and conservative—that’s when I knew that I was a sort of living contradiction, at least insofar as how much of the world would see me.
The modern conservative movement still isn’t an entirely welcoming home for gay men. That much is widely known. But the true disgrace is that the progressive movement, to which most gays reflexively adhere, is too deeply ensconced in identity politics to reliably champion real progressive values. They see gay people like me who cross party lines not as independent thinkers who must be wooed back with fresh ideas, but as traitors worthy of contempt.
Gay Conservative Dating Sites
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the progressive media ecosystem—including LGBT publications such as The Advocate and The Washington Blade. Between promotions for the pro-abortion Women’s March and profiles of gun-control advocates, gay media typically assumes the non-existence of LGBT people who don’t embrace left-wing politics. Queerty describes itself as “the leading gay and lesbian news and entertainment site.” But when you look past the drag queens and gay fanfare to articles calling for Ivanka Trump’s imprisonment and memes mocking the president, it’s clear that this website is no neutral advocate for sexual equality. What disturbs me is how Queerty casually assigns its editors’ beliefs to the entire LGBT community. Their slogan is “Free of an agenda (except that gay one)”—which is clever, but untrue.
Embedded in this media culture is the implicit notion that gay people are monolithic, that they have no individual capacity to reason or hold different values. The progressivism is so performative that pro-Trump groups have been barred from “Pride March” celebrations. How is that kind of insistence on ideological uniformity “progressive?” It signals the very opposite of diversity.
This type of thought can bleed into the personal lives of gay men. When I tried to date during college, liberal gays on campus spotted my record of conservative activism and dubbed me the “Fox News Faggot.” Ostensibly progressive students would message me on dating apps encouraging me to kill myself, or even “match” with me—the way you’d connect with someone on Tinder—just so they could tell me I was an awful person. At a certain point, I gave up.
I deleted all the gay dating apps from my phone and resigned myself to the fact that, at least within progressive Massachusetts circles, gay conservatives like me had little chance of finding a match. Not because I wasn’t willing to date across the political aisle—I was, and did—but because much of the LGBT community-at-large viewed me as a sort of political fifth columnist. Once, a boyfriend of over two months turned to me tearfully and confessed he didn’t think he could date a Republican any longer. The notion of dating someone who was pro-life or favored free markets filled him with shame.
Over the last few years, I’ve met countless conservative gay men—and most have echoed my experiences with progressive intolerance. One recent college graduate who now works in the finance industry recently told me how after one constitutional-law class, in which he debated the legal reasoning behind the gay-marriage landmark Obergefell v. Hodges, an angry gay student told him, “You’re setting us all back. The world would be better off if you killed yourself.” One gay veteran named Marcel said that he and his husband have been called “Uncle Toms” by former friends who found out that they weren’t Democrats. Another man told me he’s had several dates get up and leave when they found out he’s not a liberal.
Is this what passes for “woke” these days?
When someone assumes that a woman cannot be an engineer, that is rightly considered sexist. If it is taken for granted that a black man must like basketball, that is correctly called out as a form of prejudice. Why, then, is it considered acceptable—or even laudable in some circles— to not just assume, but insist, that gay men occupy a certain position on the political spectrum? It’s hardly progressive to declare that one’s preferences for this or that sexual organ must determine the workings of one’s inner mind.
And no, I am not blind to the intolerance on the right side of the spectrum. My father was a stereotypical white-collar Republican, a rough-around-the-edges small-business owner who just wanted the government to leave him alone. When he talked about the perils of excessive taxation or the right to self-defence, my young eyes would light up. But when I watched him cover his eyes whenever two men kissed on TV, I felt myself shrink inside.
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It’s true that times have changed, and the modern GOP is much more accepting than the party once was. But the ugly reality remains that 60% of Republicans do not believe I should have the right to marry. As recently as November, a coalition of congressional Republicans protested the inclusion of LGBT protections in the new Canada-Mexico trade deal. This doesn’t make them evil. But it does make me politically homeless. How can I feel at home within a movement that doesn’t always accept an important part of my identity?
Whenever I think about this feeling of isolation, I’m reminded of a dusty, poorly-lit pizza place in Washington, D.C. I was a sophomore in college, hanging out with other young conservatives after one of those political conferences we couldn’t seem to avoid. Many of my Republican friends knew I was gay and didn’t care. But when some guy sitting across from me started talking about how homosexuality was an abomination, no one batted an eye—or even looked up from their iPhones. This hypocrisy shouldn’t surprise anyone. Donald Trump waved the rainbow flag at a campaign rally and promised support for the LGBT community, but then named Mike Pence as his running mate.
Dozens of Republicans I know have warmly embraced me and welcomed me into the conservative media world. Others have left comments on my articles describing their revulsion toward homosexuality, and sent tweets telling me to “sort my sins out before I worry about politics.” Or they shared ridiculous articles blaming homosexuality for pedophilia. At one conservative conference I attended, a speaker spun off into a tangent and wound up spewing nonsense about AIDS and gay immorality.
I expect these experiences will sound familiar to any gay conservative. One gay former student told me that his professor at a religious college spent a class ranting about “the gay agenda,” and insisted that being gay is a choice. In one Facebook group for young conservatives, members make posts comparing gayness to an “addiction” akin to alcoholism. One commentator eloquently implored dissident group members to “stop promoting mental illness.” So no, I won’t be getting an elephant tattoo any time soon—even as I acknowledge that many gay men feel largely welcomed by the Republican Party.
Caught betwixt and between, I don’t know what the solution is for a gay man with conservative inclinations who wants to engage publicly in American politics and policy formation. But I do hope that one day, we will live in an America where the freedom to love whom you want doesn’t come with spurious expectations about what political ideas you must embrace.
Brad Polumbo is an assistant editor at Young Voices. His work has appeared in USA Today, The Daily Beast and National Review Online. Follow him on Twitter @Brad_Polumbo.
Featured image: New York, United States. 14th June, 2017. Gays Against Guns organized a rally and march in New York City’s West Village, starting at The Stonewall Inn.