Mail Order Husbands?

Popular culture is dotted with references to the mail order bride industry, where both naÃ?¯ve and devious women from places like the Philippines, Ukraine, and Russia seek out American and European husbands. Mail order bride jokes are common on sitcoms and around office water coolers, and the real female trade is just a few clicks away on the web. Given the bounty of websites basically “selling” women to eager single men, I was curious whether there was a corresponding mail order husband phenomenon.

At first, I thought that mail order husbands might be like male exotic dancers: we all know they exist; they’re just less common than females in the same situation. My inquiry into the mail order husband trade, though, demonstrated that it’s practically nonexistent in the commercial realm. There are no real sanctioned websites offering mail order husbands to American and European women, though men from Western countries can choose from seemingly endless catalogs of would-be brides. You’ll find joking message board posts and even a spoof website called www.mailorderhusbands.net – but nothing serious offering “legitimate” mail order husbands. Nothing, that is, except for a peculiar exception: the Golden Boys marriage agency based in Ukraine. What makes it unusual? It’s exclusively for gay men.

Although it never occurred to me when I began curiously looking for mail order husband websites, there is a small industry based on matching lonely gay men in more progressive countries with Ukrainian men who are essentially seeking husbands abroad. Claiming to have facilitated more than 650 happy same-sex life partnerships and registered marriages since 1991 (when homosexuality was decriminalized in Ukraine), Golden Boys provides photos and details about Ukrainian gay men seeking partners. According to Iosif Gorodetsky, the President of Golden Boys Gay Marriage Agency, the Ukrainian husband-wannabes are only available to men from the EU, the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, and other gay-friendly countries.

Bizarrely engaged, I perused the English version of their website at www.geocities.com/russiaboys – where they list only the Ukrainian men who want to go abroad as mail order husbands. (Apparently, they also run a dating service within Ukraine, but that’s not available on this English site.) I saw 48 men, mostly in their 20s and some already divorced, listed with photos and very basic profiles. Once you are ready to place your “order” (what a creepy word!) you can select which men you want to correspond with and whether you want to send them gifts or dispatch them to English language school at night. Should you develop a connection with one of the prospective mail order husbands, the agency arranges a meeting between you and your new mate in Kiev. The chattel-like sensibility on this website is a little disturbing, though it’s not much different than what you’d see on mail order bride websites. I was wondering how immigration details would be arranged in countries without legal gay marriage, but I wasn’t about to investigate.

Other than this gay-oriented site (which obviously won’t work for heterosexual women), there’s no trace of a commercial mail order husband industry. I did find a few odd blog comments and message board posts from serious-sounding straight men in places like Russia who were lamenting this very gap in the international market. Apparently the demand among Western women for husbands from abroad is minimal, or the women who are seeking foreign husbands don’t want the mail order kind. Regardless, if you’re a straight woman seeking a straight mail order husband from someplace like Eastern Europe, you’ll have to do the legwork yourself through personal ads, chat rooms, and message boards!