Judy and Philip -Oct 13, 2003

Judy and Philip look like the average English evangelical married couple.

They go to a well regarded Baptist church in the north of England, have been married for 10 years and even have the requisite two children and a dog. Judy teaches Sunday school and Philip has been treasurer on and off over the years at the church. Philip works for the local evangelical bookshop in the town – and as far as anyone knows they suffer only from the normal every day ups and downs of married life for any Christian couple.

Judy loves Philip, always has, and when she met him in 1991 and he told he had same sex temptations she knew that God has brought them together so that she could help to ‘heal him’.
In fact their local pastor and a few very close Christian friends had assured them of the same.

So what had happened?

Philip had never actually said he was gay – he had never even said THAT word out loud until quite recently. He had always known he was different and been afraid of what it might mean. At 19 his pastor had taken him to the Aids hospice in the city and told him that was where he would end up if he allowed himself to give into his sinful desires and he had been only too willing to believe him.

The fact that he longed for a man’s touch, longed to spend his days with a man, to find his comfort and solace at the end of the day in the arms of a man - and not a woman; this must be bad - his pastor assured him it was – and society seemed to agree.

And Philip hated to stand out from the crowd, he even had a tendency to stoop a little to hide his 6 3 form and not be noticed. He wanted to play the game – conform – fit in. So when he met Judy he felt that God had answered his fervent prayers and all would be well

No of course he didn’t ‘fancy her’ but surely good Christian love was about more than that? Marriage was a covenant – an act of the will, God would honour it – and all would be well. After all lots of ‘normal’ people married and felt temptations over the years to commit adultery, but they had made promises and they had to resist those sinful urges- and his simply had to resist his urges too –and what could be easier with God honouring his actions of obedience.

Judy could not believe her good fortune – Philip was so gentle, so kind, and so beautiful. And what a good Christian man he was – being so prepared to wait until they married.

So she was not really very shocked when he finally broke down one night and confessed to her that he struggled with same sex attraction. She felt deeply honoured that God would want use her in this way.

So 10 years later – as she sits and takes another anti depressant and wonders if he’s lying to her about his train being late, she ponders her life and wonders if she is going mad. Wonders where God has gone; maybe if she had prayed more Philip would have become straight, maybe if she had been a better wife………

Can it really be that her church simply sees her as some sort of a nicotine patch on the arm of a man – to cure him, control him, make him tow the line.

Judy does not know any other women in her situation – she fears her friends would not understand – might think there was no difference – might wonder what she was worrying about – or maybe some of them would expect her to leave Philip and let him go and find a man. He was still good looking, but she’s not sure she might fare so well as a dating single mother.

And sometimes - in the deepest darkest night she cries herself to sleep – wishing that just once her husband would want her –desire her – try bite her clothes off with his teeth.

They do have sex - maybe not that often, but all her friends at church seem to imply that’s normal – she wonders if once every year or so IS normal? Deep in her heart she knows that he wants what she so almost has – the arms of a caring man round him in bed every night.

He simply needs to be loved by a man – and there isn’t single things she can do to make him look at her the way she once saw him look at a beautiful young man on the beach last summer. If only he could look at her that way. But that might be lust and that would be wrong she tells herself.

The promises of marriage are meant to be an outward and visible symbol of an inward reality. And Eros love in should be in there somewhere. In fact we so believe that sexual desire is a part of marriage that an unconsummated marriage can be annulled in law — it was never a marriage.

But how can it be anything other than an unequal yoking when a straight woman marries a gay man? Perhaps it’s even forcing him to go against his God-given nature and fake a desire that he can never feel towards a woman.
A yoking in this way of Filios and Eros love, both excellent products — both wonderful in their own way — but hardly the same in capacity, or type can only lead to pain when one side or other does not recognise that fundamental difference

Judy and Philip are fictional amalgamations of the many 10,000s couples whose lives have been made this way by society’s and the church’s pressure to conform and the church’s almost unique pressure on gay men to believe they can somehow live straight lives. It’s almost as though the church expects women to willingly sacrifice themselves to its agenda – and then offers them no support or comfort

But embodied in the churches relentless pressure on gay men to date and marry straight women perhaps lies its true view of women — not quite as real as men — there to fix men and shut up and put up.

For men and women in similar situations there is the Straight Spouse Network which has a section in the UK

Article is reproduced with the kind permission of the Church Times


Straight Spouses Network

SSN, PO Box 78, Bordon, Hampshire, GU35 8YP

Or for further details contact Sarah Hill at Sarah Hill