Is this what you would want for your daughter?

Conveniently left out of the equation in the attempts by the Christofascist Zombie Brigade to foster the growth of so-called "ex-gay ministries", designed to turn gay people into heterosexuals is one unanswered question: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Many so-called "ex-gay" men have described their lives as a daily struggle. The others, who say they never have a conflict, are probably lying. I know someone who tried to "live straight" for years. It didn't work. Now, years after an extremely messy divorce, this person has a partner of many years duration now, the person's ex-spouse has another, straight spouse, and their kids are a whole lot happier because their now out parent is happier, because said parent is no longer having to struggle against the self every day.

Even if you are a devout evangelical Christian, would you want your son or your daughter to marry someone able and willing to live a lie?

Dan Savage explains in today's New York Times:

Once a man can really pass as ex-gay — once he's got some Dockers, an expired gym membership and a bad haircut — he's supposed to become, in effect, an ex-gay missionary, reaching out to the hostile gay tribes in such inhospitable places as Chelsea and West Hollywood.

What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn't be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.

Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don't think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that's their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.

If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we're safely married off — to each other, not to your daughters.