Even more controversial than circuit parties is the recent phenomenon in urban gay male communities that is called "barebacking" – the reemergence of anal sex without use of condoms. What is unusual is that there are public advocates of ‘barebacking" and a vigorous public discourse (Gendin, 1999; Scarce, 1999). Barebackers and their supporters regard the promoters of safe sex, from the Centers for Disease Control to AIDS prevention workers in the gay community, as "condom nazis" whose messages are erotophobic and hypocritical. They point out that many safe sex edicts are rational on the surface but moralistic in essence (Browning, 1994). For example, three commonly cited sex safe "rules" are: 1)reduce the overall number of your sexual partners; 2) avoid anal sex, especially anal sex without a condom, under all circumstances; 3) eliminate "fisting" (anal penetration by the hand) and "rimming"(analingus) entirely.
The most common route of sexual transmission of HIV, passive vaginal sex is also a common route and yet heterosexuals were never warned to "avoid vaginal sex." Moreover, the "never without a condom" rule is unecessary between two monogamous partners with the same HIV status. Finally, "fisting" and "rimming" are most definitely not routes of transmission of HIV; their inclusion as "unsafe acts" is barely veiled moral repugnancy.
Proponents of barebacking feel, with some justification, that HIV ushered in an era where sex-negative, homophobic attitudes became validated. They take a harm-reduction view of prevention, reasoning that no sex is entirely "safe" from various risks. They value sex as part of gay male identity; some see sex as a path to spiritual union. The public champions of "barebacking" advocate certain rules for containing risk and providing information needed to make responsible, consensual decisions. For example, most barebacking parties follow one of two scripts: they are either limited to only HIV positive men, or they require HIV positive men to identify themselves publicly and only "bareback" in the anal receptive position , which carries less transmission risk than anal insertive.
The emergency of "barebacking" may in part stem from changes in the treatment of HIV. In the mid-nineties new medications – protease inhibitors in combination with older drugs – have transformed HIV from an always-fatal illness to one that for many is instead a lifetime disability. The impact of this has been too enormous to describe fully here, but two trends stand out. A large number of men who had literally prepared for death – cashed in their life insurance to viatical companies, made no preparations for the future, refrained from establishing intimate relationships – suddenly became nearly well. With this reprieve came unexpected psychological and practical difficulties that have been labeled the "Lazurus syndrome" ( Ragaza, 1999).
A recent couples therapy case at IPG exemplifies this phenomenon. Victor and Howard were a HIV discordant couple who had been together for five years when the new medications came on the market. Howard, the HIV infected partner, responded dramatically to these drugs. Both men were forced to look closely at a relationship that both had assumed would end within a few more years. As a consequence of the "Lazarus syndrome," the couple broke up,. Victor, the HIV negative partner, had felt obligated to remain with Howard to take care of him while he died, and Howard was afraid to die alone. Once death was no longer an imminent possibility, both men realized that they did not have enough in common to sustain a relationship that might last decades .
Second, the emergence of AIDS in the 1980’s and the transformation of the disease from a certain death sentence to a longterm illness fifteen years later has created sharply defined generational differences within the gay and lesbian community. While the "baby boom" generation of gays and lesbians has lost unprecedented numbers of peers to early death, and the generation of gay men under thirty-five never knew a time when sex was "safe," the youngest members of the gay community have never known a gay person who died of AIDS!
Some fear that these rapid changes may result in a higher rate of seroconversion among young gay men. This week a young lesbian cried in my office because her 27-year old gay male brother had just tested seropositive for HIV – after testing negative four months ago. The brother contracted HIV from a male sex partner who lied about his serostatus. Ten years ago few gay men would have considered having anal receptive unprotected sex with anyone but a long-term, committed lover – and then they took the test and were given results together!
The rapid and dramatic changes in the gay community in the last thirty years of the twentieth century have produced a phenomenon familiar to heterosexuals: a generation gap. Non- heterosexual men and women born after 1970 "came out," for the most part, during or after the development of AIDS activism. They often differentiate themselves sharply from older gays by calling themselves "queer," just as young black urban men use the term "nigga" in part to de-fuse the power of an epithet of bigotry and in part to distinguish themselves from their community elders.
"The term ‘queer’ emphasizes the blurring of identities… the queer movement/community was founded on principles of inclusivity and flexibility." ( Beemyn & Eliason, 1996,p. 170)
The word "queer" breaks down boundaries among microcommunities (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered people, fags, dykes, perverts) and gives us a united queer community…
(Bernstein & Silberman, 1996,xviii)
"Generation Q" feels alienated from older gays and lesbians. Myers-Parelli, a young lesbian, discusses her coming out to her parents.
When a lesbian comes out, the books read, parents are supposed to faint/cry/scream/disown you/deny/argue. But all mine said was "So?" If my coming out was not following the course that other lesbians had charted, I wondered, then how much of the rest of my life would their experiences apply to? (Bernstein & Silberman, 1996, p.213)
Issues And Cases In Sex Therapy
Sex therapy with "queer clients" is not so different from sex therapy with straight clients except insofar as issues of sexual identity, alternative life styles and more "kinky" sexual practices may become the focus of treatment. Case vignettes will be offered to highlight some of the kinds of problems and issues that arise in work with these diverse and intriguing clients.
At IPG we find it useful to ask questions in the assessment phase of treatment that are not asked of heterosexual clients (see Appendix). These questions yield valuable information about, for example, the degree to which the individual may feel confusion or self-hatred about their sexuality and whether there may elements of their gender or sexual identity that may be ego-dystonic. Gay men who were "sissy" boys often have been deeply damaged by the reactions of others to them in childhood; both lesbians and gay men may be troubled if their fantasies and/or attractions do not match their self-labeling.
There are some sexual problems that therapists are more or less likely to see in the lesbian and gay male population than among heterosexual clients. Vaginismus and dyspareunia are almost never complaints for lesbians; women who experience these difficulties tend to avoid penetrative sex. Delayed ejaculation does not trouble gay men as frequently as straight men: many gay men include in their repertoires an acceptance of masturbation as a way to "end" a sexual encounter. Aversion to oral sex, on the other hand, is a very common complaint. Especially since HIV made anal sex taboo for many gay males, oral sex is often as important a sexual act for gay men and women as vaginal penetration is for heterosexuals.
Therapists who work with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples are often struck by the absence of gender-specific roles among gay and lesbian couples. Even in couples where the partners seem role stereotyped in physical appearance, these apparent roles rarely hold up in actual behavior. The partner who looks masculine may be the one who enjoys children and keeping house, whereas the woman who loves lipstick and high heels may also be the one who does household plumbing repairs. Most importantly, it is rare to find one member of a gay or lesbian couple totally financially dependent on the other, and it is less common for a gay or lesbian household to contain children. Thus, gay couples obviously are less likely to stay together because one person is financially dependent on the other or "for the sake of the kids." These differences make the power dynamics in gay couples somewhat different and, interestingly, make the quality of their sexual/intimate relationship assume a higher priority than in more traditional heterosexual marriages.
However, even if roles in same-sex relationships tend to be a bit more variable and fluid, roles in the bedroom may be rigidified. This problem is a bit easier to deal with in same-sex couples. For one thing, same-sex partners are not dealing with opposing sexual role expectations (e.g., male must initiate, female must be submissive) as are heterosexual partners. Gay men and lesbians tend to have a more varied sexual repertoire than heterosexuals; penetration is not the main focus of sexual activity for either men or women. Lesbians, and especially gay men, often have a knowledge of sexual technique that may surpass that of the therapist, and because there is nothing in gay sex comparable to the heterosexual emphasis on vaginal intercourse, they may be more willing to experiment with new sexual approaches.
Gay male couples (and some lesbian couples) often have sexually nonexclusive relationships. Both men and women in gay relationships sometimes request help in conducting nonmonogamous relationships within the context of a primary commitment to one partner. In these cases most nongay therapists have to examine their own beliefs about nonmonogamy. Most people, including sex therapists, are raised to regard nonmonogamy as sinful or destructive and are reluctant to acknowledge that sexual openness can work quite well for many couples provided that conflicts arising from jealousy and other issues are adequately anticipated and addressed.
The therapist can help the couple construct "rules of conduct" for nonmonogamy that will minimize pain and strife, and when nonmonogamy works it often actually enhances the sexual relationship of the primary partners.
Case Examples:
With the aid of a counselor, Joe and Harold, monogamous partners for 2 years, negotiated a transition to nonmonogamy that began with joint expeditions to J.O. parties , moved to "three-ways," and eventually permitted both Joe and Harold to have independent sexual contacts provided that these contacts were "one-night stands."
Sally and Jessica were in conflict because Sally felt unable to commit to monogamy, and Jessica was doubtful about her ability to handle her jealousy. In therapy, the two women negotiated an agreement in which Sally was permitted outside affairs as long as Jessica never knew about them; that is, Sally could not see women who were mutual acquaintances and must conduct her affairs so that Jessica would not find out.
Nonmonogamy tends to be more common among gay male couples and also tends to be more successful. In large part, this is because gay men (like their heterosexual counterparts) can often separate sex and love quite easily and are satisfied with extramarital encounters that are purely sexual. By contrast, lesbians (like most women) fuse sex and love and tend to want not casual sexual encounters but "affairs" that are potentially more threatening to the primary relationship.
Just as nonmonogamy is a common issue for many gay male couples, lesbian couples often suffer from fusion or the existence of such intense closeness and intimacy that the individual identities of the two women become completely submerged in the couple (Nichols, 1990,1988). Fusion is often an underlying cause of inhibited sexual desire in lesbian couples, the most frequent sexual complaint among gay women. Female couples tend to have less frequent sex than either heterosexuals or gay men (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). Frequently, this is not a problem, and many lesbian couples eventually cease having sex or have it rather rarely – a few times per year, for example. But when one women has a lusty sexual appetitite, there are problems.
The sex therapist sometimes has access to special resources less available in the heterosexual world. Among gay men paying for sex is so acceptable that quasi-surrogates are easily available. And lesbian erotica is so much more varied and abundant than that available to heterosexual women that a sex therapist can easily recommend a wide range of videos, magazines, and books with specific sexual variations – butch/femme sex, for example, or any of a wide variety of s/m practices.
Identity and "Coming out" Problems
The number of individuals seeking treatment because they are confused about their sexual orientation or because they wish to change orientation has declined dramatically in the last several decades. Consequently, the meaning of identity confusion is different now. In the past, an individual with same-sex attractions could be expected to experience a sometimes prolonged period of internal struggle and conflict before embracing a gay or lesbian identity (Nichols, 1995,1990). Now, many self-identified lesbians, gays, and bisexuals "come out" to themselves and others with a minimum of fear, shame, or self-hatred. The degree to which gays and bisexuals experience "internalized homophobia" has also diminished dramatically. When clients present with severe sexual orientation confusion or self-hatred related to sexual identity, it is often symptomatic of deeper pathology.
Case Example:
When Herb, a forty-four year old white male computer programmer, came to our practice complained of severe depression, his first words were "I’m not entirely sure I’m heterosexual." Herb still lives with his aging parents and has never lived independently except for his undergraduate college years. He has had one sexual experience with a woman, which was practically coerced by the woman, and none with males. He masturbates two or three times a week and his masturbation fantasies are entirely homosexual. Herb is conscious of sexual attractions to males, which he describes as "an unnatural preoccupation with the male body." He admires women but has no experience of being sexually aroused by a woman. He "cannot imagine" being gay, despite the fact that his mother and several friends have gone out of their way to express acceptance of homosexuality, and despite working in a corporation that has had an explicit policy of gay non-discrimination for many years and has recently introduced domestic partner benefits.
Twenty years ago Herb’s story was commonplace. In 1999 it is highly unusual. Therefore, we considered Herb’s struggle with sexual identity as symptomatic of a deeper, entrenched problem and diagnosed him with avoidant personality disorder. Our treatment goal is the same as it would have been with this presenting problem twenty years ago: to help him accept his gay orientation. However, we expect Herb’s process to be longer and more difficult, and assume that a lack of social skills and entrenched problems with intimacy will affect the course of treatment.
Herb’s situation also reflects the continued existence of homophobia in the treatment biases of some heterosexual therapists. Before coming to IPG, Herb spent fifteen years in therapy with two different heterosexual male therapists. Neither one made sexual orientation a focus of treatment, despite Herb’s report that he gave the same information to these previous therapists that he gave to us. One of them avoided discussion of sexual identity completely; the other told Herb that he "did not have enough sexual experience" to determine his sexual orientation. These therapists may have colluded with Herb’s avoidant behavior in a way that has left Herb isolated and fearful of what will happen to him when his parents die – a realistic concern.
Case Example:
The case of June is a less serious example of how the meaning of sexual identity confusion has changed over the last several decades.
June came for help in 1996, when she was twenty-two. Like Herb, June still lived with her parents and had limited sexual experience. However, unlike Herb, June did not masturbate at all, much less masturbate to homosexual fantasy. This is not uncommon among gay women, just as women, no matter what their sexual orientation, tend to have diminished sexuality as compared to men in all areas.
The only clue to her sexuality lay in her "friendships" with other women. Several of these relationships followed the same pattern: June became so intensely involved that her life revolved around the friendship, and she became broken-hearted when the "friend" eventually became involved in a love relationship with someone else. Most recently, these "friendships" had been with self-identified lesbians.
During the course of therapy June admitted to herself that her attractions had been romantic. She was given "homework" to learn to masturbate, and in the course of learning to pleasure herself she was asked to read books of women’s sexual fantasies in order to discover what turned her on. Not surprisingly, she found the lesbian fantasies most erotic. It was difficult to determine why June’s sexuality had been apparently repressed for so long. She came from a politically liberal, not particularly religious family and had always lived in the New York metropolitan area, where she had abundant exposure to gay lifestyles. She was not aware of homophobic feelings and attitudes and not particularly fearful of losing family or friends if she "came out."
As treatment continued it appeared that June’s "repression" was more connected to issues of independence, intimacy, and lack of social skills than to "internalized homophobia." June had great difficulty with the idea of breaking from her parents to become an autonomous adult. She was also afraid of rejection and lacked assertive abilities. Thus, even when she was more certain she "might be gay," she found it almost impossible to make her attractions obvious to the object of her desire. Although, with prodding, she joined some gay groups and developed a network of lesbian acquaintances, her relationships with women never went beyond friendship . In fact, the only shift in her object choice was that as her same-sex desires became more obvious to her, she tended to develop infatuations with lesbians already in relationships. She became the "third wheel" of these relationships, the friend who tagged along with the couple when they allowed it. June left treatment without having a sexual experience, let alone a relationship. She was, however, much clearer about her barriers to intimacy. "I’m just the kind of person who has to move slowly," she said as treatment ended. "Maybe in a few years I’ll be in a relationship." In a case such as this, June’s identity confusion was akin to a red herring, masking deeper problems.
Because the mainstream culture is more accepting of homosexuality, gay lifestyles are much more visible than they were only a few short years ago: the existence of openly gay celebrities such as Ellen de Generis and, yes, Melissa Etheridge was unthinkable to previous generations . Therefore, it is more common for young people to question their identity even if they are not gay. As recently as twenty years ago a therapist could assume that a reasonably healthy client exhibiting sexual identity confusion was very likely to be gay or at least strongly bisexual. This is no longer true.
Tony came to therapy during his undergraduate years because in high school he had had sexual contact with a male teacher over an extended period of time. Tony was ashamed of this relationship and had kept it hidden from his male friends and his girlfriends. Although Tony himself raised the question of whether he might be gay, his relationship with the teacher appeared to have more to do with a need for male nurturing than with sexuality. Tony was always the recipient of touching or oral sex in these encounters and, although he became aroused to orgasm, he seemed to do so in spite of the same sex nature of the encounters rather than because of it. He reported no same sex fantasies, attractions, or behaviors either before or after his relationship with the older man.
Tony’s attitude toward his sexual identity was striking in that he seemed comparatively undisturbed by the prospect of being gay or bisexual. "I’d rather be straight," he said. "But if I am gay, I want to find out now so I don’t waste my life pretending to be something I am not."
After eight months of treatment Tony was able to let go of the disturbing feelings and memories associated with the past. He told his girlfriend, his mother, and eventually even some male friends about his experience. For a time he attended meetings of a support group for men who had been sexually abused as children. We both concluded that Tony probably was not "repressing his true feelings." Occasionally things are what they seem to be on the surface.
Sometimes the new openess about sexual orientation, especially on college campuses, creates new kinds of "coming out" problems.
Case Example:
Claire was a young college student who saw me intermittently over a period of three years as part of treatment for her recurrent depressive disorder. When Claire was a psychology undergraduate student, she was an "out" activist for gay and women’s causes, and experienced few reprisals for her openness from other students or faculty. After college Claire decided to get some field experience before continuing graduate work to become a psychotherapist, so she obtained a job as an aide on the adolescent unit of a nearby private psychiatric hospital. She was shocked to discover that her openness met with virulent disapproval from staff social workers. Claire was "out" to the adolescents in her care, and as a result several of them revealed their homosexuality to her. Her openness was labeled "inappropriate" by her superiors and she was faulted for "disrupting the treatment process" of the teens on her unit. Eventually, she was unjustly accused of being sexually provocative with a young female patient and was fired. Our work then was to repair the damage done to her self-confidence and her trust of others, and , sadly, to help her develop a less idealistic vision of the world. Fortunately, she will be attending Smith College for graduate work, situated in the "lesbian capital of the world."
Case Example:
Irene saw me briefly for counseling during the summer break between her freshman and sophomore years at a large Ivy League university. Her problem was ironic: in her first year away, she had confirmed for herself the lesbian identity she had felt emerging in her high school years. There was tremendous support for her identity development at the college she attended. Moreover, her parents, who had raised Irene in a bohemian neighborhood of a large city, were entirely accepting of alternative lifestyles. In fact, her mother had told her years earlier that she suspected Irene might be gay and that, if this were true, the mother would do all she could to help her. But Irene found herself unable to "come out" to her parents, and this filled her with self-recrimination. Therapy helped her to understand that her reluctance to "come out" had little to do with internalized homophobia and lots to do with needing a way to separate from her liberal but overprotective parents.
Bisexuality, Nonmonogamy, Sado-Masochism and Sexual Fringe Issues
In the last decade sexual minority issues even more taboo than homosexuality have come bursting out of the closet. It is worth mentioning a few representative cases because sex therapists are more likely than other practicioners to encounter clients who occupy relatively unpopulated positions on the sexual landscape. In many of these situations the presenting problems have nothing to do with the unusual sex behavior. On the contrary, just as twenty years ago many gay clients sought out gay-affirmative therapists so that they wouldn’t have to talk about their sexual orientation, so today other sexual minorities may seek out sex therapists, especially those known to work with the gay community, in order to find a professional who will not be shocked or repulsed by their lifestyle. When working with these clients, it is important that the therapist put aside preconceived concepts of "normal" and "pathological" sexuality. At IPG our rules for "pathology" are simple. We ask ourselves, "Is it consensual?" and "Is anyone clearly being damaged here?" If the answers to these questions are "yes" and "no" respectively, we consider the sexual practices nonpathological.
Case Example:
Michael and Jenny are a suburban professional couple that at first glance appear conservative, even a little bland. She is an internist and he is an executive in the finance industry; together they are raising two little girls. They were referred to IPG for marriage counseling by friends in the S/M community.
For the most part, Jenny and Mike needed help with problems common to many committed, long-term partnerships, with some notable exceptions. The couple was part of the polyamory subculture, a movement comparable to the experiments with "open relationship" in the 1970’s. The polyamory community has emerged in large part on the Internet, through bulletin boards and newsgroups. Polyamorists who meet and correspond with each other "on line" may eventually extend this to meeting "in the flesh."
Polyamorists have a vision of establishing extended families and small communities in which multiple committed romantic and sexual partnerships are the norm. For example, Mike and Jenny have a third man, Jim, who lives with them, serves as an "uncle" to their children, is a sexual partner of Jenny, and who is Mike’s best friend. All three are involved as family members and sexual partners of another polamorous trio in a nearby state. Jim and Mike have outside sexual partners as well.
When Mike and Jenny first entered couple counseling, Jim was their only "extra" partner. Mike had complaints about sex with Jenny, who was at that time his only sexual partner. His predominant sexual "script" involved physical beatings, with him as either giver of or recipient of pain. Jenny’s sexual tastes were more traditional, and it was nearly impossible for her to comply with Mike’s wishes. What made treatment difficult was that even though Mike greatly desired to actualize his primary script, he was capable of becoming erotically aroused by virtually any sexual activity, and for a long time he refused to believe that he was unique. Therefore, he personalized Jenny’s difficulties as covert attempts to control and punish him.
One therapeutic intervention was to have Mike "interview" his friends in the polyamory community until he realized that most of them had sexual repertoires far more limited than his. Once he accepted that he might never have the sexual relationship with Jenny that he desired, and mourned the loss of this fantasy, he turned his energy to active pursuit of partners who could participate in his scripts. He was successful. More recently, Mike has become close with a bisexual man. Mike very much wants to have sex with this man, primarily because he feels it would enhance the relationship. Although Mike is at most only incidentally attracted to men, he feels he can develop the ability to enjoy male-male sex because his sexuality is so flexible. Treatment interventions have included bibliotherapy and helping Mike identify ways he might find a "tutor" in the gay male community.
Case Example:
Another atypical couple was Daniel, mentioned earlier as the bisexual man with gender issues, and his bisexual wife Kate. Both self-identified as bisexual
from adolescence. For the first ten years of their marriage they were monogamous. However, they practiced monogamy not because they held it as a moral value but simply because they felt their relationship needed a lot of stability before they could "open" the relationship without damage. Daniel is probably a "Kinsey 4 or 5:" more gay than straight. However, he is deeply in love with Kate and feels no conflict about giving up the possibility of a primary relationship with a man. Kate is most likely a Kinsey 2 – mostly straight.
Soon past the ten year mark in their marriage, Kate and Daniel came to IPG for help negotiating the change in the relationship. At IPG, our experience with couple counseling for gay men gave us substantial expertise with the phenomenon of non-exclusive relationships. With our help, Daniel and Kate decided that it would be less threatening for them to "open" the relationship by incorporating extra people into their couple sex, rather than by having separate sexual liasons. They located their first outside sexual contact, a bisexual man, at a support group for bisexuals. Daniel, Kate, and Luis met for sex and friendly companionship several times and the couple negotiated feelings of jealousy, exclusion, and insecurity that arose very well. Howevever, Kate was unhappy because she wanted same-sex contact herself. They located other couples who desired this kind of sexual contact by, once again, accessing the Internet, which is a golden resource for those on the sexual fringe. Here, however, they discovered that most "bisexual couples" were in fact heterosexual men with bisexual women, and Daniel became frustrated. After a year or so or experimentation, they finally began to locate couples where both partners were bisexual and, to their delight, found two such couples who were not only good sexual partners but good friends as well.
Desire Discrepancy and Other Sexual Script Issues
As noted earlier, the most common sexual problem that lesbians bring to treatment is desire discrepancy/inhibited sexual desire. Treatment is complicated by a number of factors. One factor that stands out as characteristic of lesbian couples is that the woman who desires sex more is usually not contented with being pleasured by her mate. She often insists that her partner be "turned on" and even have orgasm. In part this is because women have a hard time being selfish about sex. A lesbian might have a very hard time enjoying receiving pleasure without reciprocating, because she believes this is morally wrong. This makes one potential solution to discrepant desire – that the less sexual partner give but not receive pleasure at times – more difficult for the therapist to negotiate.
Compared to men, women sometimes seem to have dramatically sharp drops in sexual desire after the limerance period of a relationship wears off. When this happens to only one woman in a lesbian couple, her more desirous partner tends to feel rejected, not only because she equates decreased desire with decreased love, but also because she believes "love conquers all." In other words, if the less sexual partner "really wanted to," she could feel more desire. The less sexual partner, on the other hand, may believe that high sexual desire is "objectifying" and a bit crude, and feel her lover’s interest in sex is inappropriate.
Case Example:
Reggie is a lesbian in her mid-thirties with a strong sex drive. She and Betty had great sex for the first six months of their relationship. As is all too typical of lesbian couples, they moved in together and pledged undying love after three months. By the time Betty’s interest in sex had dropped precipitously Reggie had made plans to accompany Betty to China to bring home the daughter Betty was adopting as a single mother.
After nine months together the difference in sexual desire between the two women was vast; Betty probably would have been content with sex four times per year and Reggie would have liked four times per week. Had their lives been less entangled they might have parted when this became clear. Instead, with so much at stake, the couple entered sex therapy. Reggie took Betty’s lack of interest very personally, and in turn Betty couldn’t understand how sex could be so important to Reggie that she might leave a relationship because of it. In the midst of couple counseling with a lesbian therapist who seemed to subtly reinforce Betty’s position, Reggie came to IPG for help. We validated her need to have sex play a strong role in her relationships, essentially helping her overcome her guilt at leaving a "marriage" entered into far too hastily.
The case of Reggie and Betty highlights another issue new to the gay and lesbian community: how to handle separations where children are involved. In this case, Betty had initiated adoption as a single parent long before meeting Reggie, and neither woman assumed that Reggie would be an equal co-parent. In fact, since the separation Reggie has attempted to stay involved with Molly, the little girl Betty adopted, with Betty’s blessing. But when two women or two men have a child together the picture is complicated and difficult. In most states, same-sex partners have neither rights nor responsibilities as co-parents. They are neither expected to pay child support after separation – nor are their rights to visitation recognized. An angry and vengeful parent can often terminate the relationship the ex-lover has with their child with complete legality. Fortunately, Betty and Reggie have engineered an amicable separation and Betty has her daughter’s best interests at heart.
