“Will & Grace” Inspires Comical, Painful Real Life Spin-offs.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to parse this article in the New York Times, about women who are married to gay men. The problem is that there isn’t enough outrage. There are women who accept their husbands lying to them, there are men who stay with their wives, even though they want to be with other men – and there are therapists that say nobody is to blame.

According to the article, “2 to 4 percent of ever-married American women had knowingly or unknowingly been in what are now called mixed-orientation marriages.” That’s an awfully nice euphemism for “one in roughly thirty three American women is married to a fag.”

Everyone in the article is very understanding of one another, which is good, since they’ve all been married and are trying to make the best of a really tough situation. So where’s the anger? Why no quotes saying “Why the fuck did I grow up in a place that made me feel I had to live a lie, which has caused me to devastate my best friend and partner?” The Times didn’t happen to record any of the women saying: “Thanks, America, for helping me build the perfect life. My especially favorite part was when, after ten years, I found out it had been phony the whole time!” The article almost makes this really tragic problem seem like another mundane aspect of family life in the USA, like arguing over who takes out the garbage, and trying to figure out who actually like ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.”

If I’d written this article, I think the headline would have been “I Married A Queer, And I’m Really Fucking Pissed About It.” The sub hed could then be a hubby response, like “Hey, You Think I Fucking Enjoyed All Those Times I Had to Stick My Face Down There?”