Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

A recent issue of the New York Times discussed television in Bhutan, a remote Buddhist nation in the Himalayas. Government authorities there have been cautious about which channels to allow on the air, and have discontinued some because of fear that they would harm the culture.

"MTV was quietly taken off the air too," the article notes, "along with Fashion TV, which Karma Ura, a prominent academic here, described as antithetical to Bhutanese Buddhist tradition. Fashion TV, as he put it, had 'no suffering-alleviation value.'"

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hat a different view of the world! It's hard to imagine that US network executives consider suffering when they plan their programming.

Alleviating suffering is considered a prime virtue in Buddhism, but it is something that we do not focus on much in Western societies. How would we organize the world if we wanted people to suffer less?

That's a question that kept coming up in Miss Poubelle's recent interactions with guys who call themselves bi-married. These are men who are attracted to other men, but married to women. And it's a group that experiences a lot of suffering. Websites such as Bimarried.com give advice to these guys (bisexual women married to men appear to flock elsewhere), and give the rest of us some perspective on what they're going through.

The site has some practical tips about how to conceal computer evidence from your wife, how to meet a man online, how to get fucked for the first time. There are moving personal statements from bi-married guys about the dilemma in which they find themselves. If they don't act on their sexual desires, they are miserable and unsatisfied. If they do act on them, they feel guilty about betraying their wives and families.

Considering the situation of these guys made Miss Poubelle think about Buddha and how we'd organize society to minimize suffering. It seems to her that there are two main forces that lead men into the bi-married dilemma.

One is clearly homophobia. If men did not fear homosexual attraction, then it seems likely that a lot of the bi-married guys could have explored their attractions to men before they were in a serious relationship with a woman. Coming out early is a path away from pain, but coming out is only an option in times and places where it is safe to do so. And a lot of the bi-married men grew up in an environment where they found it all-but-impossible to come out.

But another force for suffering is the reverence of monogamy and the idea that marriage precludes other sexual partners. That's a cultural construct that is widely at a variance with reality. Few men will be happy with just one sexual partner all their lives. Heterosexual men suffer and sneak around in the same ways that bi-married men do. And monogamous gay relationships are just as filled with sexual tension and unhappiness.

If the bi-married men had entered open marriages, then they would be able to explore their sexual feelings for other men without fear of destroying their families. Nearly every major voice in our society promotes the myth of happy monogamy. That ignores the fact that real or suspected infidelity is a major source of murder, violence, and misery in our world.

Most of the people reading this are out gay men, but some of Blanche's readers are bi-married guys who are in the closet, perhaps reading this while on the down-low at a bar or bathhouse. Those of us who are out and those of us who are in the closet have different lives, but we should be allies on some points.

There's no easy solution for the guys who are already in the bi-married life. But if we want to try to make it easier for the next generation, there are two messages we need to get out to the world. One is that it's okay to be gay-- it is not a sickness or a sin. The consequences are no longer so dire, and there are supportive institutions and laws against discrimination. The second message is that open marriage is a moral and viable option for both gay and straight couples. We need to let people that it's possible to have loving, committed, and stable relationships that are not sexually exclusive.

Blanche thinks that gay rights and open marriage are two of the most important things which could relieve suffering and make it easier for the next generation to deal openly with their sexuality. We're never going to have a society like Bhutan, where we judge public policy according to whether it has "suffering-alleviation value." But we move in the right direction by promoting honesty in sex as way of creating a more enlightened world.