From today’s AP…
SAN FRANCISCO – Wah Cheong, a lifelong Republican and the soon-to-be divorced father of two teenage boys, sometimes surprises his co-workers and neighbors in a relatively conservative community outside San Francisco when he says he supports same-sex marriage.
“Here is my situation,” the 47-year-old chemical engineer tells them when the hot-button topic comes up. “If gays and lesbians were more accepted, I wouldn’t have married a closeted lesbian.”
Silence usually follows. Then, a spark of understanding.
Think of Colorado Springs, where the former minister, Ted Haggard, still insists he’s 100% heterosexual, after betraying his wife and his church. I heard a sermon in my own church, by a homosexual minister, who said a psychiatrist advised him to marry a ‘homely intelligent woman’. ‘Homely,’ he said, ‘because presumably she’d be grateful to get married at all, and intelligent so that she could make sense of the contradictions in the relationship.’ To his credit, he stayed single.
Banning same-sex marriage is a popular cause on the right, but it does nothing to protect anyone’s marriage. More marriages could be saved by honesty and unselfish love, and getting married for the right reasons in the first place.
Kmareka.com 
It’s very interesting to me as a therapist to meet people who are struggling with their sexual identity at all stages of life, sometimes as teenagers, sometimes young adults, sometimes older adults. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to convey a message of acceptance and “let’s explore” to them. There is also a need to help them plan strategically who they want to tell about their identity, and who is better left in the dark. Sometimes telling parents or other family members can backfire dramatically, and leave a person feeling very isolated and distressed.
I also learned from a speaker at a recent CEU conference, Stump Olsen, about helping people differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity. Some people identify more with one gender in terms of how they behave (dressing and behaving in more traditionally “masculine” ways) and helping them separate this out may help relieve some of the anxiety they feel about the complicated picture of their overall identity.