The Ex-Wives Of Gay Men

Marriage equality will benefit not just the gays:

As the debate over legalizing same-sex marriage in the District grows louder and more polarized, there are people whose support for the proposal is personal but not often talked about. They are federal workers and professionals, men and women who share little except that their former spouses tried to live as heterosexuals but at some point realized they could not. [...]

"It's like you hit a brick wall when they come out," [Kimberly] Brooks said. "You think everything is fine and then, boom!" Carolyn Sega Lowengart calls it "retroactive humiliation." It's that embarrassment that washes over her when she looks back at photographs or is struck by a memory and wonders what, if anything, from that time was real. Did he ever love her? "I'm 61 years old," said Lowengart, who lives in Chevy Chase. "Will I ever know what it's like to be loved passionately? Probably not."

These tangibly broken families, these ruptured relationships, these betrayed spouses and confused children: why is it that the anti-equality forces have nothing to say to them?