None of this is news to anyone who grew up Mormon, a religion that demands complete chastity before marriage, complete fidelity after marriage, and promises--if you're good enough--sex forever and ever in the hereafter. That's right: if you live up to Mormonism's requirements, you get to go to heaven and, with your resurrected body, make babies. The most righteous of men get to have limitless celestial orgasms, while the most righteous of women get to have limitless celestial pregnancies. This is the logical conclusion of calling god "our heavenly father"--he begot our spirits, literally, Mormonism teaches--and Mormons also have obscure teachings about Mother(s) in Heaven. (Like a proper Victorian gentleman, god the father keeps her/them cloistered away from the world, so she isn't/they aren't the subject(s) of gossip or blasphemy.) This is also the logic that justifies polygamy as a celestial law: there will be more righteous women in the hereafter, and men will have to knock up A LOT of goddesses to conceive all the spirits necessary tpopo populate an entire planet.

As I was told as a teenager 30 years ago, "If you choose to have sex before or outside of marriage, you will forfeit sex in the next life. It's up to you." Gee. I wonder why the thought of spending all eternity as a brood mare wasn't all that appealing to me.

@Bigguns

So, Mormon Heaven is a bone-bumping, corporeal, procreative-runaway train? That certainly appeals to the beast in us: replicating one's DNA.

Yup. And for the civilized part of the creature, there's the reassurance that in Mormon heaven, one's personality and relationships will be preserved just as they are in life. That was Joseph Smith's real innovation: teaching that heaven is EXACTLY like earth--down to the issue of employment--only free of pain and suffering.

You see why it has enormous appeal for certain people.

Traister writes,

According to the New York Times story, "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said." That's just peachy in its presumption that Bristol had a choice about whether or not to continue her pregnancy.

"keep the baby" doesn't mean she decided not to have an abortion, which was never an option. It means she's not giving the child up for adoption. It means she'll raise it herself.

I'm pro-choice, but good grief, how can you really understand the issue if you don't get the rhetoric the pro-life camp uses to discuss pregnancy?

duh.

As a straight Mormon woman who was engaged to a gay Mormon man 20 years ago, who has written extensively about relationships between gay Mormon men and straight Mormon women, I know that your story is pretty common. I was lucky: my ex-fiance refused to marry me, though he wouldn't tell me why at first, but because he wouldn't marry me we were able to salvage a friendship when he finally came out of the closet. In fact, I was a witness at his wedding when he finally married a man.

I can tell you this: you need to come out of the closet--the sooner, the better. You need to become involved in the fight for gay equality. Cary is right: you need to share your story. There are many forums where you could do this. One is Affirmation, a support organization for gay and lesbian Mormons. Another is Sunstone, which is simply devoted to an open exploration of Mormon issues, but because of the church's support for Prop 8 in California, gay rights comes up fairly often in liberal Mormon circles. Their blog has had some pretty involved conversations about it.

You might also start checking out "mixed orientation marriage" blogs. There are a lot of gay Mormon men who continue to embark on and defend marriages like yours. But would you want your children to have marriages like yours? It's important that people who really understand this issue start explaining why people should form their families with someone they desire, instead of someone they can never satisfy who will never satisfy them. Whether your choices were dumb or courageous, they've certainly resulted in suffering that could have been avoided. One way to redeem your unhappiness is to help other people avoid it.

And please know that within Mormondom, there are people who wish you well and hope you find happiness through accepting who you are. Maybe there aren't a lot among the conventional membership, but within the larger culture of people who have left the church for whatever reason, plenty of us understand how it's hard to leave the church but necessary if want to live a life of both integrity and happiness.

Good luck.