Yes, my lover and I got married in the New Year’s Eve, away from our families and friends, because we both come from a Catholic background and everybody in our social circle is deeply religious and homophobic. I am Adam and my lover is Ralph. We have been together for the last 5 years and no one ever suspected anything so far.
Contrary to what you may think, my parents actually talked about sexuality with me when I was younger. That is when I was informed about the religious specifications and when I began asking difficult questions like “Why are those 2 men kissing?” my parents explained me that they are sinners and will face Hell after they will die. That is because God rejects that kind of sexual behavior and it is against his specifications to adopt such a behavior. They have always told me that love is exclusively between a man and a woman and when two people of the same sex are involved in a sexual relationship, it is never about love but about a sickness of the mind and the soul. I was born believing these things and I only began questioning them when I have reached 17 years of age. I never understood why, if God was all-powerful and all-knowing, he would allow such a behavior in humans. I mean he must know how will a man behave when he will reach adulthood. Why doesn’t he just eliminate this so called sickness from a human’s mind? God can do that, right? He is all-powerful. The fact that He does nothing means that he accepts it. Then why would He send gays to hell, after all? It just did not make any sense and I struggled for a long time to understand this. Then, when I have reached puberty, I began manifesting sexual desires and that was the moment when I have realized that I have never been attracted by girls. It was boys who I found appealing, but for a while I thought it was only due to the fact that I have spent so much time thinking about it. I thought they were only bad thoughts and I have tried to overcome them for a while, because I thought they were contrary to the will of God.
Then, one day I met Ralph through some of my friends and I instantly fell in love with him. He was the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen and we were having a great time together. We soon discovered that we had a lot in common and not only that but it was something else that united us. He was also gay and he also came from a familial environment that promoted homophobia and he was also rejecting his family’s values. We often spent hours talking about the subject and needless to say that we soon started dating and our love story began to unfold. We were living in our own secluded world, where no one had access and I soon began questioning the most fundamental of the Catholic teachings that my parents have taught me. They have said that there is no love between 2 men, but only a mental sickness and I started asking myself how exactly did they defined love? Because it was love what Ralph and I shared and no one could say otherwise. He was my first experience in this regard, but I knew right from the first time that it was love without question.
Our relationship lasted for more than 5 years and during that time we slowly gave up on all the catholic teachings and for the first time I felt a change in the way I was looking at the world. I suddenly felt free, like the world had opened to me. I was no longer afraid to express my feelings and I no longer felt that guilt nor was I under the haunting impression that my thoughts were being monitored by a malevolent deity anymore. It was like I had been living in a shadow for my whole life and I was experiencing the first ray of light.
I am now 27 and Ralph is 29 and we got married in secret during the New Year’s Eve. It was not a religious wedding, of course, we only got our papers and our marriage is now legalized. None of our families and friends know about this and we are still discussing whether we should tell them or not. I guess that time will eventually come, because this is not something you can hide forever. I guess they will have to accept us in the end, because it is who we are and we cannot change.
We are in love with one another and whoever claims we cannot possibly express love, has no idea what love actually is.
