spoon full of sugar said:
Chuck S I'm guessing your not a big John Wayne fan

. Cowboys have ALWAYS been portrayed in American mythology as loners. Every cowboy book you read has the bachelor for life character in it. This wasn't considered strange, hell no real man wants to be tied down to some woman and a passle of kids.

So, it wasn't necessary for them to marry to hide their secret from the world so they weren't murdered

, they married to hide it from themselves. To prove to themselves that they weren't "some damn queer". That is supremely selfish and dishonest. Why do you keep making excuses for it?
You clearly need to realize the state of today's society still does not allow the freedom to love whom one chooses. You brought up Matthew Shephard in an earlier post. That wasn't that long ago. The fear being of beaten or killed still exists in the gay community. In fact, I do not know a single gay man or lesbian who does not harbor a fear of becoming a victim of a bashing to one extent or another. Whether mild or escalated, that fear is still alive and well. I live in New York City, and "f-g bashings" do still occur whether folks like to admit it or not.
And it's pretty obvious you don't or won't admit it. Fear still exists in the gay community, and the root cause of that fear is indeed at the feet of society at large. Once homosexuality is recognized as not being the root of all evil as some feel, or the acceptance thereof is not seen as the end of society as we know it, that fear will still be there. There are men and women who would rather see a gay man be murdered than married.
So what does that fear of reciminations do to a person? It makes them assimiliate themselves to the norms established by society. Hence, a gay man will remain in the closet, marry a woman, have a family. Is that wrong? You're damn right it is. It's wrong for that man to deny himself the ability to be truly in love. It's wrong to the woman to be married to a man whom she thinks is madly in love with her. It's wrong for the children. It's wrong, period.
I know a few women, from real life and on the DIS, who have been hurt, if not emotionally destroyed, because the man they thought they knew, left them and came out later. Whether "later" was a couple of years into their marriage, or 20 years into it. It was and is devastating.
Hopefully one day, dear poster, you will recognize and understand that your view of the world is rather rose colored and people are people. Don't judge, it doesn't become you.