Monica Bousfield met her husband Horacio Frey in the fortuitous aisles of Babies R Us, where they both worked in the early 2000s. At first, they were just friends. Then best friends. Then after about a year of hanging out constantly, they surmised they must be dating. A year later, Monica nudged Horacio that it was probably time for them to go ahead and get married. After an eight-month engagement, they did, and while they eventually both left Babies R Us, their commitment to each other later resulted in two babies they would together raise. Through all this, Monica kept her maiden name—primarily because she’d never known of another couple like her and Horacio to last, and she didn’t want to complicate legal paperwork around having to undergo name changes twice. Monica had never heard of a woman marrying a gay man and having it not end in divorce. While she’d known Horacio was gay from their early days of hanging out, there were two other things she knew about Horacio: he was her best friend, and she wanted to marry him. Over two decades later, the couple is still making it work in Westminster, Colorado, where they have two children—Caylin, who is 17 and also identifies as queer, and Dominic—13.
While Horacio has known he’s gay since a young age, this is the first time he has come out publicly. His childhood was marked with hardships, having suffered abuse and being adopted at age eight, which created abandonment issues. He came out to a few friends and his parents in high school, but very few people knew he was gay when he married Monica. He had been raised in a Christian church community in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While it was an open affirming congregation, Horacio opted for the white picket fence and kids route that was so highly encouraged. When he met Monica, she was not active in the LDS faith of her family of origin, but after their daughter was born, Monica says, “I realized I had this amazing, super special kid, and started going back to church gradually and then more actively.” After about five or six years of attending by herself with Caylin, Horacio converted. Monica laughs that she has the kind of mom who, every time they went to her house for dinner, would make sure the missionaries just happened to be there. Finally, Monica says, “She had a set there with the right personality at the right time.”
Horacio’s bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Security brought him to Colorado. After receiving her bachelor’s at what is now UVU, Monica started a graduate school program in counseling at CU Denver. But three years into the program and then married, she found while she loved learning about counseling, she had no desire to go into the practice. Instead, Monica went into management at Babies R Us, and then got her masters in HR. Now she works for a local municipality in compensation and benefits, a job she loves. Horacio works as a tech manager for a solar company.
Monica says, “if you’re going to marry someone who’s gay and you’re not, you need to be pretty confident, but we figured we’d never know if our marriage would work out unless we got married.” The beginning of their union felt lonely for Monica, having no one she could talk to who could relate to her variety of issues. “I internalized a lot, which is probably not healthy. But I didn’t want to out him. When others would talk about how great their marriage was, I was like, ‘Um, yeah…’” Monica didn’t actualize that hers was not the only mixed orientation marriage in existence until a few years ago. But of her almost-exclusive status, she says, “It doesn’t go away and it’s not easy. I’m not going to say it’s not worth it, but it’s not easy.” Horacio agrees it’s been difficult as well from his perspective with the couple talking about it, then not talking about it, when perhaps they should have more often. But after lots of counseling, he says, “We’re committed to making it work and have no interested in getting divorced or not making it work.” Monica appreciates how Horacio is still her best friend, despite the complexity of their issues.
Five years ago, new information about their children brought the two even closer together. Around the same time that Dominic (at age 8) was identified as being on the autism spectrum, Caylin revealed that she’s queer. Of their kids, Monica says, “She’s very creative, and he’s very, very logical. It’s two extremes, and definitely makes things interesting.”
While Monica was shocked about Caylin’s admission, Horacio was not as surprised, after Caylin had recently played Christina Aguilera’s “You are Beautiful” at the dining room table and asked her dad if he’d still love her if she came out. It was 2020 during the pandemic, and the family had spent much of their time together in quarantine. One afternoon, while on her way to her first outing to a friend’s house in a long while, Caylin sat in the back of her parent’s car, quietly drafting a text. She didn’t hit send until she’d safely entered her friend’s front door, and Monica and Horacio drove home in shock, processing. Besides the blindsiding of the information itself, they were now also apparently “old” because they had no idea what Caylin meant by: “I’m coming out as pansexual.” Monica googled it on their drive, while her heart stung with the second half of Caylin’s text: “I hope you still love me after this is over and done with.” Of course they did, she says.
However, needing more time to process as she hadn’t heard of a 12-year-old coming out that young before, Monica sent Horacio to pick up their daughter. When he pulled up to the house in a slight rainfall, he saw a rainbow in the sky behind Caylin’s friend’s roof. A scene that felt “picture perfect.” Caylin got in the car and Horacio abruptly revealed he was mad at his daughter--only because she had told him in a text and not in person. The two went and got ice cream at Chic-fil-A (Monica now laughs at the irony of that), and Horacio explained to his daughter that he was in a position to understand what Caylin was feeling. He revealed, “Not that I want to steal your story, but I understand because I identify as gay.” Horacio went on to explain how Caylin could still have church values, even though there is a lot of stigma in church communities about how to act. Horacio clarified, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Your mother and I still love you and will navigate with you, and you’ll get through it.”
Caylin says she’d known she “was some flavor of gay” since age nine, just growing up in the internet age, though she didn’t always have words for what she felt. She now prefers to identify as queer instead of pansexual, and says it has been hard to “figure out what I actually am and to surround myself with people who would accept me, especially in the church where a lot of people don’t necessarily agree with all of that.” Now a senior in high school, the church is still a part of Caylin’s life as she attends sacrament meetings on Sundays, but she prefers to go to Relief Society with her mom over Young Women’s. She also prefers to avoid seminary and youth activities, and keeps quiet about how she identifies at church. The family’s ward is small and skews a bit older and more conservative. With few youth, there are fewer opportunities for friendships. Caylin says her school has its ups and downs, but she has a good friend group and likes to do art and read fiction and romance books--the Caraval book series being a favorite. She also participates in theater, and is on the costume crew for the school’s current production of Chicago. While dating has been a part of her teen years, she’s not currently seeing anyone.
Shortly after Caylin came out to her parents at age 13, she was sitting at a stoplight with her mom. Monica remembers her saying, “Mom, I don’t know why God hates gay people.” Monica asked what she meant by that, reiterating that God loves everybody. Caylin replied, “I don’t know why gay people can’t get married in the temple, have kids, and do all the things.” Monica feels this messaging kids receive while sitting in the pews is important to share, as the words hit hard and create more harm than some may intend. While it took Monica herself time to process the news Caylin shared via text that day, she now feels protective “like a mama bear” and wears a rainbow pin and speaks up when it feels appropriate, which can be hard to gage in their ward. Horacio also wears some sort of rainbow every Sunday.
The family has attended some of the events sponsored by their local ally group Rainbow COnnection, which was started by members of their stake. While Monica’s an introvert, she values the gatherings. In her extended family circle, people tend to more quietly share big news to avoid big reactions. Monica has appreciated how talking with her relatives about Caylin has strengthened her relationship with her family members who were raised in a world where their family “looked good on the outside but weren’t that close.” Nowadays, they’re working on being closer at home.
Caylin says sharing a unique identifier alongside her dad has helped her to feel less alone. She now focuses on not letting others’ opinions bother her. One Sunday, after a lesson in which someone expressed how they had a kid “struggling with LGBTQ issues,” Caylin walked out into the hall and toward their car, confidently telling her mom, “I’m not struggling with LGBTQ issues. I’m quite good with them.”
For Monica, who has kept much close to her heart over the 20+ years of her marriage, she longs for a day when it feels more comfortable for people to share what they’re experiencing at church in a real way, instead of trying to present the image of “being perfect.” She says, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people could say, ‘I’m really struggling with this,’ instead of ‘Life is great’! I’ve dealt with a lot on my own, which is probably not the best way to handle things.” She continues, “It’s good more people have been talking about this in the last few years. It’s important to get out there and hear about it and share, so you don’t feel so alone.”
