Last Sunday TLC aired a special about three couples and one single male coping with a condition known as SSA.
"I guess one of the more unique things about our relationship is that I experience SSA," Jeff, husband to Tanya, tells the cameras as his wife sits by, looking somber.
"[SSA] is just a part of them and who they are. ... It was a thing that he wasn't ever going to tell anyone; he wanted to go to his grave with it. But it got so out of control that he couldn't hide it from me anymore," Tera says about her husband, Curtis.
"With the SSA, we're so different in so many ways," wife Megan says about her husband, Pret.
Says a concerned friend of the women who have formed an informal support group when she learns of their husbands' diagnoses: "When I heard about SSA, I was taken aback, really a lot of questions just flooded my mind,"
Ours too. Does it only affect men? Is it contagious? Incurable? Terminal?
Just what is this SSA?
Same-sex attraction. The title of the TLC special: My Husband Is Not Gay.
"Not gay, SSA!" Tanya says, perhaps too emphatically, like she's trying to convince herself as well as what remains of the former Here Comes Honey Boo Boo demographic tuned in to TLC that her husband, who repeatedly promulgates his preference for men, is not homosexual. Nope. Not him.
"Who will I notice first, a beautiful man walking down the street or a beautiful woman walking down the street?" Jeff asks, almost salivating. "I'll notice the beautiful man, nine times out of 10."
Tanya adds abruptly, "So it's somebody that's attracted to the same sex but wants to be in a heterosexual relationship."
The SSA men on this TLC special are LDS. That alphabet soup is to say these guys are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And Mormons maintain that acting on homosexual impulses is sinful. These men are physically attracted to men, but have chosen to marry women (who they claim to love) and have children, all while still lusting over men -- and very openly so -- while including as much sexual innuendo as possible.
On a double-date with their wives, Jeff and Pret spend most of dinner discussing their "danger scale" (rating men on a scale of one to four, four being the most tempting) and the physical attributes of their waiter ("He's a very good looking guy," Jeff says, while Pret says he prefers a "more masculine, butch all-American guy").
After all, Jeff says, "I found it's more freeing to just acknowledge, yes, that is a beautiful man." Freeing to him, perhaps, but frustrating, we suspect, for Tanya, no matter how OK with everything she says she is. How is this different from two heterosexual men drooling over other women in their wives' company?
And therein is my problem with My Husband Is Not Gay. If the seemingly unsatisfying arrangement works for all involved (they protest -- perhaps too much -- that it does), fine. But must they disrespectfully flaunt their urges for men in front of the women they chose to be their wives and mothers of their children (all couples have kids -- several old enough to watch this and understand) and the whole cable-watching world?
There's being attracted and then there is being tactless.
Many had another problem with MHING. More than 100,000 signed a Change.org petition calling for TLC to cancel the special. Author Josh Sanders, who says he is Christian and gay and participated in therapy to become straight, wrote, "I was promised I could change, and told that I should 'pray the gay away.' In the end, the only thing that this so-called 'therapy' did was stoke a growing despair that maybe my life wasn't worth living." And Sarah Kate Ellis of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) called the special "dangerous programming," saying via statement, "This show is downright irresponsible. No one can change who they love, and, more importantly, no one should have to."
But still, everyone can change the channel -- our solution when anyone wants to censor a show, no matter how detestable they might find it.
We didn't change the channel. We watched the entire uneasy hour-long MHING. So we experienced the awkward moment when Jeff announces to Tanya he'll be going on an overnight camping trip with some guys she doesn't know. Um, this is somehow different from a hetero man going on an overnight camping trip with strange women, while leaving his wife and kid at home?
Even "Not gay, SSA!" Tanya isn't cool with this, reminding him, "Do you remember the incident that happened at the house a couple years ago?" Jeff admits to the cameras without elaborating, "There was one time a couple of guys slept over at my house and let's just say things got a little out of control."
That tense exchange occurs as Jeff and Tanya prepare for an equally uncomfortable dinner party. They have set up single SSA friend Tom on a blind date with an unsuspecting female (hey, they both like musicals!). Jeff spends the entire meal cracking pointed jokes about wiener dogs ("That's the kind of dog you should get, Tom!") and dessert ("I do like some apple pie every once in a while'').
Jeff might chalk it up to his SSA.
We chalk it up to Jeff being an ... well, rearrange SSA.
Got something to SSAy? Email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture.
Style on 01/18/2015