And Then There is Texas

I've always been proud to be a Texan. Texas is a truly unique place in the world. That is not to say that there are not other unique places in the world. There are of course. That is why my wife and I spend so much time traveling around the world. But Texas is the unique place with which I am most familiar and the place I always return to from my travels.

That said, more and more my pride in being a Texan is being shaken these days by the utter stupidity

of some of those who make news as political activists. Recently Texas had its State GOP Convention. Nothing wrong with that of course. Every state has one, but undoubtedly none of these other states conventions come up with as many stupid platform proposals as do the far right-wing Texans who represent the evangelical Christians and the Tea Party and dominate the Platform Committee.

In the recent GOP Convention in Texas the approximately 7000 member Platform Committee decided in their total lack of wisdom that the GOP Platform should contain language supporting Reparative Therapy for gays to help them become straight. Seeing as how every respected psychiatric organization in the United States has declared Reparative Therapy to be roughly the equivalent of curative snake oil, it was an embarrassing moment for most Texas Republicans and for Texas. But that is part of the problem. The far right-wing Christians and the radical Tea Party members have no capacity whatsoever to be embarrassed over their own stupidity and ignorance. The are perfectly comfortable in their feelings that what they believe is truth and that it is their duty to see that everyone else believes it too.

While other states are recognizing the reality of equal opportunity under the law for gays to marry their same-sex partners, too many Texans cling to the false notion that such marriages would be a direct and immediate danger to their own marital status.

Fortunately, at the same time, an amazing number of Texas citizens do not subscribe to this foolishness. The other day a couple of my gay friends invited my wife and I to a party at their home. They have a large home in a part of Houston that is being regentrified  on the north side. This regentrification is largely the product of gay couples who are moving into the area and fixing up homes that have been home to squatters for the last several years. The house my friends bought was totally covered in vines in the front. In the back, windows had been broken for squatters to enter and the house was a total wreck. Light fixtures, air conditioners and anything else with any value had been ripped out and carried away. In just less than a year, my friends turned it into a showplace again much to the liking of their straight neighbors.

The neighbors have not only continued to be supportive but also quick to include my friends in the social activities of the neighborhood. At the party there were lesbian couples, gay couples and straight couples. It was not a gay party. It was a neighborhood party and everyone had a great deal of fun. The party started at 5:00 p.m. and the invitation said it would continue until the last guest departed. That turned out to be a little after 2:00 a.m.

The point is that most of Texas' population is located in its three large metropolitan areas and these

people are doing a great job of learning how to judge people, not by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, but rather by their character. It is a wonderful thing. It's not such a wonderful thing that the chief purveyors of hate and discrimination these days is found in our politics and in our evangelical churches. Oh sure, the claim to love the sinner but hate the sin thinking that lets them off the hook. It never occurs to them that homosexuality might not always be a sin.

Yesterday a circuit court in Denver ruled that every state must allow same-sex marriage under the equal protection provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America. This sets in motion the process that will end with a review by the U.S. Supreme Court. No one can predict what the sharply divided court will do in this case; but if I was betting, I know where I'd place my bet.

We live in interesting times. There is much wrong with our world. Hatred looms in too many areas of the world fed all to0 often by religious zealots who use religion to support their own hate and prejudice.

I'm proud to be an American and a Texan, for although we're far from perfect, we remain the best hope of the world and things generally are getting better all the time in our part of the world. Hopefully our politicians and our religious leaders will come to recognize that they are out of touch with the citizens they represent. We'll never get rid of political institutions, but if religious institutions don't soon come to grips with changing realities, they'll soon find themselves having to close their doors for lack of money and congregations to keep them open.

Jack Scott

So You're Bisexual or Gay and Married - Now What?

I've spent years writing to gay and bisexual men encouraging them to look at their lives with a large dose of introspection and strive to come to peace with who they are. I'm always pleased when I get letters from these guys telling me I've been helpful to them; but I never really get to know how much they have actually accomplished because I've never met them in person and I don't have the luxury of staying in touch with them over a period of  years to see how it all turns out. Sometimes I'm pretty confident a guy has really gotten his act together and will stay on course to a better life. Sometimes I'm fearful a guy has ultimately been overwhelmed and ended up in very bad circumstances.

I have had the good fortune to have worked with a small number of men personally and one on one to encourage them to take action to change their lives. I'm happy to say none of the men with whom I've been able to work with personally have failed to make significant changes in their lives and find happiness at levels previously unknown to them. For the most part, at levels they were previously unable to imagine.

Changing one's life patterns is not an easy thing to do. It takes years of hard work and the willingness to never give up. It takes both the inner courage to step into the unknown and the emotional stability and

courage to function in a time of transition in which every value one has ever held is being rexamined, updated or jettisoned.

Such a task is so difficult that I am not surprised at all that the people who do the best are the people who have personal support to fall back upon. Changing one's life long view of himself is no easy task. Most guys simply do not have the tenacity to do it on their own. I think I was able to do it because I had the good fortune to be raised by a mother who taught me to question everything and by a father who taught me never to give up. It didn't hurt that I was inquisitive by nature and a "Type A" personality who was never satisfied with the status quo. Even so, it took me many years to affect the change because I was very much alone and had no one to talk to or to give me advice.

I don't take meddling in people's lives for granted. It often gnaws at my conscience to know that in spite of my best intentions, what I have said to someone could end up opening the doors to tragedy for him. Reclaiming one's life from the wrong path is no easy process. I'm always afraid some guy has absorbed just enough of what I've tried to tell him to get himself in even more trouble, but not nearly enough to get his life on a new and successful path.

I've spent so many years trying to get guys to change the direction of their lives, I was surprised a couple of years ago when I began to hear more and more from guys who have found renewed happiness in another way. It's a complicated thing, as it always is when human sexuality is concerned, but basically these guys have not so much changed the direction of their lives as they have reexamined their lives, their wants, needs and circumstances. They have decided to be satisfied with what they have and choose to be happy, rather than take a risk that might lead to the loss of everything they worked for all their lives.

More often than not, these guys have experienced all the pain, anger and sense of not fitting in anywhere that I experienced while trying to understand myself. However, for reasons that differ somewhat with each man, once they came to know themselves as either married gay guys or married bisexual guys, the knowing and the self acceptance were enough for them. They felt no irresistible compulsion to explore a new life style of sexual intimacy with both men and women. At first, I was skeptical. Based on my own experience, I couldn't really believe such a thing possible. But as more and more men described their experiences to me, I had no choice but to see what they were doing as a real alternative reaction to dealing with one's sexuality and circumstance. In fact, not only was it a real alternative, in some cases it seemed to be a very wise alternative.

I have often spoken of a close friend of mine in my writings, using him as an example of one thing or another. His way of dealing with his own homosexuality helps to illustrate one side of the point I am getting to. He was married for 25 years. These were, he has often told me, the worst and most unhappy 25 years of his life. For all of the 25 years he was miserable in his marriage. It wasn't that he and his wife didn't have many of the trappings of a good marriage. They had more than most. They had one of the nicer homes in town set on a large acreage. He was making in excess of 100K a year in a job he loved. In the 25 years they had conceived three living children who were bright, well adjusted and a source of real pride. I have no doubt, even today, had his wife been a different type of person, he would have never left her. But as it was, she was demanding, controlling, unappreciative, snippy, quick to see something bad in every situation and unwilling to ever see the good in any situation. Living as a married homosexual man was bad enough for my friend, but living as a homosexual man married to an unrepentant bitch was simply too much for him. His wife was exactly like her mother, and he knew that with each passing year she would get harder to live with just as did her mother. His father-in-law dealt with it all by simply giving up. He never voiced an opinion. When she told him to jump his only question was, "how high shall I jump dear?" And my friend saw that his mother-in-law still talked about her husband like he was a dog. She was simply unable to have respect for anyone or anything.  He couldn't see himself playing the role of  his father-in-law.

When he made the decision to come out of the closet and live his life openly as a gay man, he first told his siblings, then his parents. Next he told his children saving his wife until the last. He had expected support from everyone except his father and his wife. Much to his surprise, his father was also supportive. He had not misjudged his wife however. Her anger and rage knew no boundaries. She physically assaulted him. She screamed and cried and carried on simply refusing to accept any of it. The problem was, she made it clear she was more concerned with what their friends would think than she was concerned with anything else.

My friend is a big strong guy. He could have easily defended himself from the physical assaults, but he knew better than to touch her and give her cause to involve the police, a situation that would likely land him in jail. Instead, he simply walked away from it all with just the clothes on his back. He left her the house, the cars, the bank accounts, everything. He left the house with a single suitcase of this things. 

In the over six years of their separation, he has continued to send money every month. In fact, he sends the major part of his income to his ex wife and his kids. He has put one through college. The middle child will complete her college studies in 2014 and the youngest will begin college that year. Mike has sacrificed to get them through college and keep their mother in the house in which they grew up. Not every man would have been so generous with her. I'm afraid I fall into that category. But he was determined to be more than fair.

Had she been a different type of woman, I'm convinced he would have taken a different route, as I mentioned above; and that is exactly what I have heard from other men.

Over the last couple of years a number of men have shared with me their own reactions in the aftermath of coming to understand and accept their homosexuality or their bisexuality. Denial, or failure to

understand that they were different, had been a lifelong bitter pill for them. Strangely though, coming to know and to accept, in and of itself, seemed to bring peace to these men. Just knowing somehow seemed enough. As usual in this era, these are men who always knew they were somehow different from other men; but who, 40 to 50 years ago had no choice but to get married and raise a family if they wanted a successful life. It was what society expected and demanded at the time. Luckily for these men it had, in many ways, worked out for them. They loved their wives, they loved their kids and grandkids. They had a successful career and a place in the community. In return, they were loved and respected by their wives.

They had come to realize, they were married gay or bisexual men; but they did not feel their new born acceptance of it gave them license to chuck it all and go on a spree of any kind. Their were people they loved, people who looked up to them and respected them for whom they had real love and concern. This included their wives who had loved them, supported them and stood buy them through the years and been a mother to their children.

In the end, these men had been wise enough to do a simple risk-reward analysis of their options rather

than just run head long into the unknown of a new life. It didn't take them long to see that the risks they would incur far outweighed the possible rewards in a new and unknown path. It is not that there are not long term successful gay relationships, there certainly are; but they are certainly not yet the norm. Why, these men reasoned, give up a happy long term relationship for the unknown at a time in their life when sexual performance and stamina was on the downturn anyway?

For the bisexual men, the reasoning was much the same. Some I talked to had very enjoyable and substantial sexual relationships with their wives; and they loved their wives. Others were in marriages in which, for both partners, sex had become less than necessary; yet the partners were still committed  and loving companions who enjoyed each other company and the entitlements of being the parents of grown children as well as the joys of grandchildren. Why rock the boat? The risks simply outweighed the possible rewards.

My friend was not the only man I knew well who would have made a different decision had he been blessed with the benefits of a loving and supportive wife. My friend Bill was in the exact same position. From the first, Bill had know that his marriage was not a real marriage in any sense of the word. There was nothing common to a husband and wife that he and his wife had except for the fact that they lived in the same house and had children together. But the children were long gone and he and his wife lived in separate parts of the house. They had no contact with each other except what was necessary for the running of the house. They lived separate lives together. There was no love, no emotional closeness, no joy. No mutual support. Had it been different, Bill more likely than not, would have lived out his life as a married gay man.

As it is both of my friends are now out and happy for the first times in their lives living with their gay partners. Bill is finding out daily the common joy that comes with living with someone who loves him. It is a life he had never known in the past.

As for my other friend, he has very little money of his own now, but he has a good job and a partner he loves. He does not regret the loss of the material things he walked away from. He feels he got the best end of the deal by far. His life is far from perfect, but it is a life which makes him happy.

One of the things I have come to see clearly over the last 20 years is, there is no supreme rule for married guys who are gay or bisexual which, if they follow it, will assure their happiness. Instead I have come to see every man should be wise enough to do his own risk-reward assessment and make very careful decisions concerning the rest of his life. I have seen all to often the tragedy that comes from failing to do such an assessment.

I have done few things in my life without careful assessment and lots of thought and planning. Handling my own bisexuality was no exception. Unlike the two friends I have mentioned, I was blessed with a very happy

marriage and a wife who loves me dearly. We enjoyed a sex life that rocked our worlds. It never seemed to get old or boring. I did make the decision to experiment with my desires for male/male sex. I found it to be enjoyable, but I found it did nott hold a candle to what I had at home. For me a male/male relationship was much more about having a valued and trusted male friend than anything else. I was lucky enough to have a couple of long term relationships in which the bond between us was important. But in the end it was not lasting. I was also blessed to have a wife who I knew would cut me some slack, if she ever found out my secrets. I was not wrong about that.

Now, I have reached the point in my life due to health issues beyond my control in which sex of any

kind is not possible for me. I would have once thought I'd rather be dead than be in this position. I was wrong about that. Life is still good. My wife and I are still very much in love. We've found that love really has little to do with sex in the long run. It has much more to do with true friendships, mutual interests and a common outlook on life.

In addition, I still have close and intimate friendships with the two friends I've mentioned and a couple of other guys. These are not sexual relationships but just true friendships built on their own type of love and the mutual benefits that spring from such relationships.

Had I given up my "straight" life, I would have given up way too much indeed. Had I not come to understand my bisexuality and come to be at peace with it, I would have settled for way too little in my life. As it was I achieved the right balance for me.

One guy put a lot of it in perspective for me when he told me he had come to realize that millions of straight men see a lot of women whom they are sexually attracted to; but they don't pursue the attraction because they take their marriage vows seriously. Further more, they genuinely care about their spouses happiness and peace of mind. They care about retaining her trust. Therefore they make do with, just enjoying the eye candy and continuing to get their needs met at home. It can be the same way with a married gay or bisexual man. There is nothing wrong with looking and appreciating. Really nothing wrong with even a little lust. It can add fire to the primary relationship with the wife.

My wife and I travel a lot. In a few days we will be heading to Europe to see many of the treasures there. I'll never own art treasures or treasured antiquities; but fortunately, I don't have to own them to enjoy them. I can look for free. So it is for married gays and bisexuals who have decided that acting on their male/male desires is just too risky. They can look all they want for free and maintain the enjoyment and bonds of love and trust in their marriage when the marriage is a good one.

When I was sexually active with other men, I was a careful as I could possibly be to ensure my health and safety. But as it seems to be with everything these days, things are just getting more and more complex and difficult. There was once, not so long ago, comfort in the fact that if one did slip up, miracle antibiotics would put all back right. Now there are more and more of the super bugs which have increasing levels of resistance to even our most powerful antibiotics.

Once, not so long a go, a careful guy could spot the signs of STD's and steer clear. That is no long possible. For many of the present day STD's there is no sign whatsoever. They hide in plain sight ready to destroy one's life, maybe soon or maybe years down the road. It is a risk which simply cannot be accurately assessed, a risk which is better just avoided.

More and more, I talk to gay guys or bisexual guys who are joining their partners in complete medical workups before they have unprotected sex. I think these guys are doing the right thing these days. At the same time, I see a bigger number of guys who simply live for today thinking they are bullet proof. It's a fools game. I'm old enough to have lost a number of friends to AIDS. The threat is mitigated now, but it is not absent and even if the right against AIDS is won, there are plenty of other life changing or life threatening STDS out there to take its place.

To me it all simply adds up that simple risk-reward assessments should be the norm for any sexually active person. It is so much easier to ruin one's life that it is to put it back together.

My experience has taught me that identifying and coming to terms with our sexuality is a must. However, once that task is accomplished, there are many paths to happiness and fulfillment. The problem is, for any given individual, there is, more likely than not, only a single path that will lead to personal happiness and fulfillment. For a married man who has come to understand and accept his sexuality, the second task is to carefully assess and examine the possible path to determine the best one for himself and for those he loves.

Men of a certain age, made choices years ago. It is not too late for them to make wholesale changes in their lives without wrecking or damaging the lives of others. I'm certainly not adverse to men making the changes when their situation is no longer bearable, but that is not usually the case. For me, I would be lost now if I had chosen to end my marriage. I could have never replace the love and support I enjoy with my wife. It would have been so sad for me to give up what I spent a life time building simply to die alone.

So, you're married; but you're not straight. What now? Well, the answer might be closer to home than you think. It might also involve a brand new start. Think carefully, for men over 50 you'll probably live out your life with the choices you make now, good or bad!

Jack Scott

Should One Try To Hold On To A Mixed Orientation Marriage

In August, 2011, I posted a blog piece entitled, "I'm Married To A Bisexual Man, Will It Work" . That post has become the third most read post I've ever written which tells me there are a lot of married bisexual men and their wives out there who are very much interested in the question.

One of the several reasons I continue to write this blog is because the interaction with other people through the blog helps me to grow and change in my understanding of the world and the people who populate it and what motivates us as individuals. It seems most people dread, or even fear, change. One of my oldest and dearest friends of almost 50 years is such a man. He will do anything to avoid the stress change causes him. He just doesn't like it. I have never been such a person. Even as a little kid, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I was always ready to be somewhere else and doing something else. Change has always been an adventure to me.

As I got older I settled down some, but I never reached a point at which I was willing to revere the status quo at the expense of changing something for the better. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the status quo or appreciate old things. I can and I do; but I also have a great appreciation for new ideas and new things.

As we say here in Texas, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since 2011. I have met a number of people, both men and women, who have dealt first hand with the issue of a mixed orientation marriage. Their experiences have given me a great deal to think about regarding the issue.

Obviously, I cannot escape the reality that marriage between a bisexual guy and a straight woman can work. My wife and I will celebrate almost 50 years of marriage this summer. She has known of my bisexuality for almost a decade. Of all the issues that have confronted our marriage in all that time, I can honestly say, and I think she would agree, my bisexuality has not been the biggest hurdle we had to overcome. It certainly was not the one that fueled the most fights between us by a long shot.

So yes, I still contend, and present myself and my wife as living evidence, that not only can a mixed orientation marriage survive; but it can be intensely happy and successful. But in the time since I wrote that blog piece, a new question has presented itself to me though several men and women whom I have met through this blog.

The question is not just, "Can marriage between a straight lady and a bisexual guy work?" The further question is, "Should one try to hold on to their mixed orientation marriage without giving serious thought to other solutions?" Again, the experience of my wife and myself proves that sometimes holding on is the thing to do. But there is a big caveat to that. You see, my wife and I never had to hold on to our marriage. Our marriage was never really threatened by my bisexuality. Sure there were adjustments on both sides, but my wife never went screaming off into the night about divorce. Neither did she issue any unreasonable demands or expectations. For us, it was just a matter of talking it through. Our marriage had been on a strong foundation for more than 30 years. This new revelation to her was not going to destroy it. We had too much invested in our relationship and there was too much about it that was important to us.

The only things we ever fought about in our marriage were sex, money and the kids. The kids are grown with kids of their own. Money is no longer an issue for us. We are more than comfortable financially. Our sex life was always robust and satisfying too.

With my cancer, sex is no longer an issue for me and she has chosen not to let it be an issue for her. We both miss it greatly, but we understand those days are gone. We are thankful that we made sure to make the most of all the sexual years we had together. Because we have nothing to fight about we just don't fight. We spend our time and energy doing the things we love to do, some of them mutual, some of them engaged in by only one or the other of us.

We both know that the next big change in our lives will be when one or the other passes away, and one is left to carry on. It will be a major turning point in our lives, so we are careful to make the most of every day we have left together. In the overall scheme of things as viewed from our present perspective, my bisexuality is not really such a big thing.

I don't know if many of you know it or not, but divorce actions are most often filed by women rather than men. Men are much more likely to be happy in their marriages, than are women. Men seem to find it easier to accept when everything is not just as they wish it to be. Perhaps it is because men, more often than not, enter into marriage with a more realistic perspective whereas women grow up filled with a fairy tale image of a prince charming who will carry them away, make sure to protect them from all harm, yet at the same time be more than willing to bend his will to hers in every way. The reality is that kind of fairy tale rarely takes place in real life. Further, when it does happen, women quickly find they cannot love and respect a man who lets himself be dominated by a woman, even if they do enjoy some of the perks of that sort of relationship.

Recently, I received a letter from a 42 year old man whose marriage is coming apart. He made the mistake of telling his wife about his bisexuality before she was emotionally ready to hear of it. She retaliated by demanding that he bring a male partner into the marriage so she could enjoy him too. He did so, but it solved no problems. She still claims to want to divorce him, date new men and find someone who will make her happy.

He told me he takes full responsibility for destroying what had been a strong and happy marriage. My reply to him was there was more than enough responsibility to go around and his wife bore her own share of the blame. True, she had no input into  his bisexuality or how he should handle it, but neither did she handle it constructively when she did find out about it. Instead she made it an excuse for her own "tit for tat" response and her own childish desire to find someone "to make her happy." It should be needless to say, but obviously isn't that no one can make any of us happy. Happiness come from within ourselves. We choose to be happy -- or not! Too many people make choices that insure they will never be happy, and more often than not, they make those choices for all the wrong reasons.

Unwittingly, this woman has chosen not to be happy. She is headed for the complete destruction of her life. And in destroying her own life she is likely to destroy the lives of her husband and her children as well. It is such a tragedy.

I'm not trying to excuse this man from his responsibility at all. But looking at it realistically all the trouble sprang from him trying to do what he honestly thought was a good course of action with an intractable problem - come clean. She failed him, she failed herself and she failed her children. In reality, he had come clean to her in an attempt to save their relationship. She chose to destroy it. He is suffering for trying to do the right thing.

The reality is their marriage was never strong. It probably was never really happy. If it had been, it could not have so easily been destroyed. Along those lines the only bright side may be that there was nothing worth the saving. That the marriage is destroyed may be a blessing to both of them in the long run. He has a chance to start over. She has an opportunity to learn that her happiness does not begin in others or end with others.

Of course it is not always the woman in a challenged marriage who drives the most nails. Sometimes it is the man who takes on that task. A couple of  years ago I heard from a woman who lives here in Texas. She had just found that her husband was not straight and she wanted to save her marriage. This woman was willing to do whatever it took to save her marriage. She had the emotional and financial resources that allowed her to take on the task. There was only one problem. Her husband is not worth the trouble. He had the opportunity to seek realistic help and advice to help him in the situation in which he found himself. He squandered it.

She has given him chance after chance after chance to make a decision about what he wants most in life, his family or his sexual freedom. He's chosen his sexual freedom, but he has done it in a cowardly manner which has not clearly informed her of his choice. In reality he has taken her willingness to work with him and stabbed her in the back with it while he continues to try to act like a spoiled child and have his cake while he east it too. He has never been honest and straight forward with her. He's just been an ass hole. He doesn't seem to understand or to care that he is punishing her for caring about him and trying to stand by him. All he is interested in is his own pleasure. At the same time, though he's an ass hole, he not so big of an ass hole that he can pull off his childish self-centered life choices without some measure of guilt. He has begun to self medicate in order to escape the guilt. I will not be surprised to find that he ultimately destroys, perhaps even takes his own life.

We all know the grim statistics of American marriage. Almost half of all marriages fail. What fewer of us know is what psychotherapists like my wife see year in and year out. Of the marriages that survive, the majority of them are not  happy. The unhappy couple stays together because they cannot afford to divorce, because they have mistakenly decided it is in the best interest of their children to stay together, because divorce is against their religious faith or any one of hundreds of other illegitimate reasons.

One thing should be perfectly clear and unmistakeable. If a marriage would not have been happy had not mixed sexual orientations been a part of it, it is not worth trying to hold onto when mixed orientation becomes an open part of it. Both parties would be wise to take their lumps, deserved or undeserved, and put the marriage aside with as little animosity, anger and vengeance as possible. Animosity, anger and vengeance will simply prolong the agony and make it more expensive.

One caveat is that a happy marriage should not be confused with a perfect marriage. Strangely, some of the marriages that do survive mixed orientations are far from perfect, yet they have a history of having been happy marriages. There are several models for this type of marriage:

• a woman who enjoys the status she achieve through her successful husband and a man who enjoys the freedom this give him,
• a woman who has no interest in sex and is perfectly happy for her husband to find it where he will so long as she doesn't have to be confronted with it and a man who enjoys the sexual variety this allows him,
• a woman who understand she can live more financially secure with a husband she doesn't love than she can alone and a man who feels the same way, or
• a woman who finds real companionship with her husband in non sexual ways and whose husband finds the same thing with her. In short two people who are truly friends.

None of these types of marriages can be described as successful in the classic sense of the word, but all of them can, in the right circumstance, be quite happy.

I must make it clear that it is not just women who can have unrealistic expectations. We men are quite capable of doing the same thing. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am always saying I have lived the most blessed of lives. That is not just something I say. It is something I really feel is true. I have lived a blessed life. But again the caveat to that is that having lived a blessed life is not the same as having lived a perfectly happy and serene life. I've had my share of sorrow and disappointment. I've had my share of anger and strife, but I choose to be truly happy. I choose to concentrate on all the blessings of my life rather than on anything else, for I know there is nothing I can do to change the sorrow, disappointments, anger and strife. I can only choose how much sway they have over me. I choose not to give them much sway. Some of you may find this difficult to believe, but I truly have trouble remembering many of the unpleasant parts of my life because I don't hold on to them. Instead I hold on to the things that have made me happy and given me a sense of accomplishment.

One of many things which bisexual men must realize is that if it is so difficult to find the right heterosexual partner and establish a truly happy marriage, it is even more difficult - nearly impossible - to find a life long same sex partner who is everything you've dreamed of. It's true, I have never wanted for a same sex partner. The man I've needed has always been there when I needed him. Part of the reason why is because I've always made it a point to look at the good in others and not concentrate on the bad. I'll tell you a little secret. I have had four principle same sex partners in my life. I have never ended a partnership. My partner has always ended the relationship. But, and this is the important thing, I've never stood in the way of a partner ending the relationship. I have always accepted it with a measure of grace and a willingness to accept its metamorphosis into something new. Thus I've never had a partnership truly end. I've continued to be friends with every partner I've ever had. I am good at realizing that few of us can live our lives solely on our own terms. But then again I understand well that by coming to terms with what we cannot control, we can truly live our lives in terms that are truly acceptable to us.

Some of you will find this difficult to understand, may even think it crazy; but it's not. A good example is my cancer. I have no control over my cancer. All things being equal, I'd rather not have it; but things are never equal. I have it and that is that. I can't control that. What I can do is choose how I react to my cancer. I choose to be happy in spite of it. None of us is guaranteed tomorrow. We are all guaranteed death. I've had almost 66 years of good life. That's a lot more than some. And in the end, I'm not afraid of dying. I'm more afraid of living when I no longer wish to be living. With my cancer, I know I'll never have to do that for long. I won't linger for years not knowing who I am or who my loved ones are. A few short weeks of no treatments to hold back my cancer, and I'll be gone. There are worse things in life, and I know some of the people with those worse things personally.

Finally, I must tell you that some of the happiest married bisexual or married homosexual men I have come to know in the last couple of decades are those who had the courage to put their marriages aside and give them and their former wives a new chance at life. My friends Mike and Bill are prime examples. Neither found it easy to put their marriages aside. It was difficult for them to make the decision to do it. But when they did make the decision, they did it without anger, and without any attempt to be vengeful or unfair. In fact both of these men sacrificed to give more than they had to give to their ex wives even though each of their marriages had never been happy, had always been labored, even bitter. Each had much in the way of material things when they ended their marriages. Each walked away from most of it. Each has reassembled the material things that help to make all of us comfortable and promote our happiness. More importantly, each has found the partner they never thought they would find and each has chosen to be happy. Neither Mike's nor Bill's partner is perfect. They are ordinary men with ordinary failings and shortcomings. But both Mike and Bill are happy for the first time in their lives.

Most of us hate change. Our first instinct is to hold on to what we've got. But at the same time we are human beings. We sometimes choose to be vengeful and bitter to punish those we perceive to have wronged us. Sometimes we even cut off our own nose to spite our own face in trying to spite others.

As I said earlier, my wife and I are prime examples of the fact that mixed orientation marriages can work; but that doesn't mean such a thing is the most common outcome. It's not. Sometimes the real virtue is the courage to walk away, learn from the experience and try again.

The ultimate point of life is to be able to find happiness in ourselves, to feel that there is purpose to our lives. We can do neither of these things if we are holding on to a dead relationship.

Each of us is an individual. There is no set answer for us to hang on to. We each have to find what is best for us as an individual. We must also understand that in a marriage, for better or worse, we are two individuals. Of the two of us, we only have control over ourselves. We cannot control the actions or inactions, the decisions our partners make or their refusal to choose as we would have them choose.

We must be willing to examine our circumstance logically and thoughtfully and have the courage to make decisions that are in the best interest of ourselves and those we care about knowing that there usually are no decisions that don't have both down sides and up sides to them.

Finally we must be very cognizant of the fact that standing still and enduring what is unendurable is no answer at all. Change may be hard, but it can be rewarding too.

Jack Scott

Seeking Equality

It has been interesting to hear speculation on what the U.S. Supreme Court might do with the two cases concerning gay Americans it began hearing this week. It has been particularly interesting to hear what the Justices, themselves, have said and the questions they have asked during the proceedings.

Of course, we learned in the court's hearings concerning ObamaCare that what the Justices say and the questions they ask don't necessarily give the slightest hint to their ultimate ruling. The same could very well be true in this round of hearings concerning gay rights.

I'm probably a pretty rare individual in that I am not a gay man, but I have been to two gay weddings. I call them weddings, though technically they were not. One was here in Texas where such weddings are not legal. The ceremony was, in reality, just a commitment ceremony presided over by a member of the clergy. I'm happy to say that the couple is still together almost 10 years later.

The second event was last August and took place in Europe. It was also not a wedding but rather a legal civil commitment ceremony presided over by a government official. But in every real respect, it was a wedding.

Like most other Americans, I have my own personal opinions on gay marriage. I hate to use the term I am about to use because it has some bad connotations, even for me; but the reality is my personal opinions on the subject are still evolving. At this moment in time, I think I would have to say I am not supportive of "marriage" for gay people. My personal opinion is they should have the benefit of a civil ceremony which gives them all the rights, benefits of protections of married people without marriage. I admit my opinion on this is greatly influenced by my desire to compromise on the subject. I can understand certain religious groups feel marriage is between a man and a woman. To limit gays to civil ceremonies takes the argument over who should be involved in marriage away from the fundamentalists.

At the same time, I have to admit marriage between two guys would not upset me personally. Nor would I feel it in anyway denigrated my own marriage. Those who contend same sex marriage would destroy traditional marriage are just being stupid. If anything has denigrated and almost destroyed traditional marriage it is those who have married multiple times and also divorced multiple times. These people, and there are millions of them, certainly have no real respect for marriage.

If I had to guess, my guess would be the high court will overturn Proposition 8 in California thus making same sex marriage legal in that state. My guess is,

the Justices will not extend their ruling outside the state of California. The rationale for such a ruling will be to put the various states on notice that the court is supportive of same sex marriage and the individual states must address the issue constitutionally or have the high court do it for them at a future date. By not imposing same sex marriage on all the sates, the Court avoids the social turmoil such a ruling would bring, yet gives support to the movement supporting same sex marriage.

As for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Court would fail to live up to its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America if it did not strike down what is clearly an arbitrary, capricious and perspicuous assault upon the Constitutional rights of American citizens. I believe the Court will strike down DOMA. Such a ruling will mandate legal marriages between same sex persons in one state be recognized in the other 49 states, even states in which gay marriage is not permitted. It will also change Federal and perhaps state laws to forbid discrimination against those in a same sex marriage. Such marriage partners will be beneficiaries of all the rights and privileges provided to traditional marriage partners including tax benefits, and other benefits traditionally extended to married spouses.

There is little doubt the conservative right will continue to rail against what they see as the advance of evil in the United States. However, I was actually pleasantly surprised last week by Rush Limbaugh's admission. As he sees it, same sex marriage is an idea whose time has come and thus cannot be stopped. I think he's right.

Twenty years from now, same sex marriage will be a normal family option in the United States. The benefits of the normalization of same sex marriage will be many. Fewer kids will find themselves the victims of our child services programs. More kids will be growing up in loving and supportive two parent homes with all the benefits for the children and for society at large such homes bring. The scare tactics of the fundamentalists will have long sense been relegated to the dust bins of history where they belong. I wish I could live to see it.

Jack Scott