He prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing happened - and then he met this girl and they got to be friends, they got to be really good friends.” Even more than friends: “Eventually something changed and he found himself being attracted to her,” he says. “He didn't think it would ever happen, he had resigned himself to being gay. “One guy described it to me as, ‘She literally is the only girl for me,’” says Throckmorton. The third-largest group consisted of same-sex attracted men who experienced sexual attraction to a single woman. The next largest group was what he calls “pretty exclusively gay.” He explains, “They didn't really feel much present attraction to their wives, they didn't feel a whole lot of attraction to their wife when they married, but they felt they needed to marry, they felt they would grow into attraction to their wives.” Of all the sub-groups, this category of men were most driven by religious pressure. “There was a general attraction to people.” “These were the men who viewed themselves as attracted to women in general and men in general, to varying degrees,” he said. When Throckmorton surveyed SSA men in relationships with women, he found that the largest sub-group were bisexual. As Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor who has studied this group, told me, “They're not all the same,” he said. I’ll give you a moment to digest all of that, because it gets much more complicated from here. “Ex-gays” have a rightful reputation for being bigoted, whereas SSAs are not necessarily opposed to homosexuality. Self-identified SSA men in heterosexual marriages generally accept the reality of their same-sex attractions but have chosen to get hitched to a woman. There are some key differences between the two groups: “Ex-gays” believe that they have successfully “cured” themselves of homosexuality. In fact, the term “same-sex attracted,” or SSA, has taken off as the notion of “ex-gays” has fallen out of favor. Note that we’re not talking about so-called ex-gays. The petitioners added that same-sex marriage would necessarily insult their own marital arrangements, because it would send “a harmful message that it is impossible, unnatural, and dangerous for the same-sex attracted to marry members of the opposite sex,” says the brief. There’s a term for this kind of relationship: It’s “mixed-orientation marriage.” Sometimes, the men in these scenarios are referred to as “same-sex attracted men married to women.” It’s a demographic that recently came to public attention with an amicus brief filed in opposition of marriage equality by a group that described itself as “same-sex attracted men and their wives.” The petitioners argued that “man-woman marriage laws” are not discriminatory, because, look at them! They managed to marry straight, despite their same-sex attraction. Weed is a practicing Mormon and the Church’s current stance on the topic of homosexuality can be summed up like so: “The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is.” While Weed says he does not pass judgment on gay relationships in general, when it came to his own life, he says, “I didn’t feel it was right.” So, he married his best friend. For a while, he considered the possibility of a relationship with another man, but he ultimately decided to pursue relationships with women, despite his lack of sexual attraction to them. They grew up together in Utah and she was the very first friend he told about his sexual attraction to other boys. Weed’s wife, Laurel, is well aware of his sexual orientation.
“I think she’s beautiful.” But he adds: “I’m gay.”
“I love her very much and we do have a very good sex life,” he said. “It’s hard to say that with clarity.” Weed is sexually attracted to men, but he’s married to a woman. “That’s a really difficult question,” he said. On the surface, the question seems simple enough: “Are you sexually attracted to your wife?” That’s what I asked 34-year-old Joshua Weed during a phone call.