Ah, but I don't think you have to be "gay" to marry where you love. In a society which accepted gays and gay marriage, Ennis would have been less likely to see a lynching, and having a strong attraction to Jack -- one which kept recurring -- he could have contemplated marriage to the person he obviously loved. And I think there would have been less of a feeling of "gotta marry a girl", too. The odds that neither man would have attached himself to a women and hurt her go up if they have a legitimate way to attach themselves to each other without condemnation.

Yeah, some people are going to be unfaithful, regardless -- or are built for angst and would find it where they find it -- but in the same way, there are people who could and would settle happily with their first great love and never look back. The article which I was arguing against thinks that making homosexuality more of a bane and a shame will somehow preserve and save the lives and happiness of the people on the periphery of a homosexual affair, and I think that notion is going at the problem exactly backwards.