Orientation

I'm writing this post for those of you who might have done a Google search looking for "Ben and Jessie Christensen, that wild and wacky couple I saw on the Fox 13 News segment about married gay Mormons." Those of you who came upon this blog by searching for "rubber pants" can leave now--we're all out.

I am Ben Christensen, and I am a self-identified gay man who has chosen to marry and stay married to a woman. Our choice to get married had something to do with our upbringing in the Mormon faith, which teaches that homosexual behavior is a sin. Ultimately, though, Jessie and I made the decision to marry and to stay married of our own free will and conscience, free of coercion or pressure from the Mormon church. Leaders of the church, in fact, have stressed that marriage should not be seen as a cure for homosexual attraction. I wholeheartedly agree with them on this point. In other words, if you're looking for someone to tell your gay son that he should just marry a woman and everything will be all right, I'm not that person. I believe that those kinds of decisions can only be made by the individual following his or her own conscience; just as I ask that people respect Jessie's and my decision to be married, I respect the decision of my gay friends who have chosen celibacy or same-sex relationships as their road to happiness.

You will notice that this blog is not called the Gaycave and my Blogger ID is not Master Gay (Fobcave and Master Fob are actually references to my writing group, the Friends of Ben). This blog is not about a married gay Mormon, but rather about a man who, among other things, is married, gay, and Mormon. As my wife recently pointed out, part of our point in being public about this detail of our marriage is to show that we are normal people living normal lives. I feel that a blog in which I only write about being gay, then, would defeat that purpose.

However, I'm guessing that if you came looking for this blog because you saw me and Jessie on Fox 13 News, it's not that you were saying, "Gee, I bet that Ben Christensen is a good writer; I'd like to read more about his obsession with Lauryn Hill or his adventures as a Library and Information Science student." For those of you who are looking for information about being gay, Mormon, and married, first I would suggest the essays I wrote for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, then a few posts I have written on the topic since then. After that, you may want to check out some of the blogs linked in my sidebar under the heading "Gay Mormon Fobs." Here you will find a broad spectrum of experiences and opinions that will give you a fuller view of the gay Mormon picture than I could by myself.