Ron Bates tells us how he felt he had to get married because of the guilt forced on him by the Catholic Church.
When Mr Bates was Master Bates, he was growing up in rural Minnesota as part of a devout Catholic family.
While attending St. John’s Prep School in Collegeville [he writes], I confessed to a priest that I was attracted to another boy who slept across from me. The priest responded that if I ever acted on that, I would go to hell.
As a sincere Catholic teen, I did not act on my attraction but started a harmful journey of self-loathing and personal destruction. I didn’t know what “homosexual” or “gay” were, but I understand “queer” and thought it was evil and perverted.
And so he eventually got married, but the sexual part of the marriage was repulsive to him, “and that was communicated indirectly to my ex-wife. That is the most unfair part. She was one of the innocent victims in the masquerade of ‘I'm straight.’ ”
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