Perhaps related to the theme of "keeping people in the dark" - and before this goes down the memory hole:

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.
- - - - - - - - - -

Of course it's from the NY Times, so it immediately segues into how "healthy" and "honest" the resulting relationships are, and how much we dumb, faithful heteros can learn from swinging homo promiscuity.

Rather than asking why such outlets are necessary.

(Just ignore those statistics about gay rates of substance abuse, depression, and suicide that are 4-5 times the general population. And the demonstrable messes caused by single motherhood and apathetic fatherhood. Get with the program!)

And of course it greatly underestimates the scope of this phenomenon. Since only around 10-20 percent of any gay "community" seeks out marriage when it's offered, these numbers ignore the 80 percent of the gay world that is so enmeshed in compulsive promiscuity that they're not interested in marriage, or admit they have no relationship that vaguely resembles marriage.

So here's another LIE to add to the pile of gay-rights lies: y'know how gay-marriage advocates swear up and down that they don't want to change the definition of marriage, they just want parity?

Nope, nope, nope. They really DO want to fold, spindle, and mutilate society's definition of marriage.

I am shocked - shocked, I say - at the duplicity.

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html

The brunette on the web page would be even prettier if it didn't look like Mr. Beard Stubble had given her a shiner.

these numbers ignore the 80 percent of the gay world that is so enmeshed in compulsive promiscuity that they're not interested in marriage, or admit they have no relationship that vaguely resembles marriage.

Don't feel so superior, Ben-David. This isn't about being gay, it's about being male. Straight men would be "enmeshed in compulsive promiscuity" as well, but for the fact that women are a little more demanding of commitment. Lesbians are probably about as "promiscuous" as those shaved-head Orthodox Jewish ladies in your world.

I'd comment on more of the steaming pile bits you posted above, but I'm on Muslim Time now (as in, I have to get to the airport disgustingly early so they can make sure I'm not one of those who wants to blow up the plane for Allah).

And no, your "in the dark" comment above doesn't tie the subject in to this blog item--it just gives you what you think passes for coverage. You want to pick the blog topics, start a blog, go on the appropriate blog item (Advice Goddess Free Swim), or e-mail them to me like the polite people do.

Good morning Ms A. My wife loves your book, Christmas present.
We stayed at the W in Chicago for 4th of july last year.Got to room, TV no worky. Went to call desk, neither did the phone. Took the vator 10 floors down to tell them. Hour later tech comes, fixes said items.Cool.
Get back to the room after having a ball ( L&L Tavern, Clark and Belmont, most excellent dive bar), the lights, all toasted. Waited for bulbs, decided to have some wine. No corkscrew. Geez.
They did comp me a room, but I found out last week when I tried to use it in SF, it only applies to Chicago, I will never use them again EVAH!

Only a religious conservite would equate sex with death BenDavid.

Could it be that the higher rates of suicides in homosexuals mighthave something to with the way religious fuckwads like you treat them?

Or how many of their famillies cut them out of their lives?

No couldnt be - it all about the sex right?

I wonder what the suicide rate was back when your ancestors were raping cannanite women and slaugtering the rest of their famillies as a form a "traditional marriage"

But then that was approved of by your god wasnt it?

Were I in a hotel room during a "disaster", about the last thing I would do is search the closet for a flashlight.

I wonder if the housekeeping staff checks on the batteries.

"Muslim Time". Fucking LOVE that term.

Good job lujlp. Live and let live Ben-David; it's about individuals rights.

PS- What a lousy job, being a flashlight in a San Fransisco area hotel; I wouldn't touch it even in an earthquake.

Checked the web site for the hotel. You're right, Crid, Homer sure could have stood a little closer to the razor.

I also noticed that Henry's, whatever that is, has been completely renovated and now features a "gastropub" menu. I'm not sure they realize how unappetizing the word "gastropub" sounds, but maybe I'm totally unhip.

...where you show up looking like you dressed in the dark.

It's Berkeley. Everyone shows up looking like they dressed in the dark. Or live in a tree.

> Straight men would be "enmeshed in
> compulsive promiscuity" as well, but
> for the fact that women are a
> little more demanding

Exactly. Exactly.

> Henry's, whatever that is, has been
> completely renovated

That salmon dish looks pretty good, but EVERY salmon dish looks pretty good.

...and how much we dumb, faithful heteros can learn from swinging homo promiscuity.

...but for the fact that [straight] women are a little more demanding....

Perhaps one reason is that gay sexual liaisons don't result in unintended offspring whose state-mandated support siphons off a percentage of the income and resources originally reserved for the immediate family.

If gay men were swinging with women and fathering children by them, perhaps we'd be hearing a different tune.

cute school-themed touches like an old-school steel desk and student lamp

Did they bring back those old college memories by providing a 13 inch black and white TV, too?

"Lesbians are probably about as "promiscuous" as those shaved-head Orthodox Jewish ladies in your world."

Might be a compelling argument if the couple the article centered around weren't lesbians. And if the study hadn't included equal numbers of lesbians.

Yeah, well, I bring my own flashlight with me when I travel. Because I know it'll work, because I put my own battries in it. I haven't had to use it yet, but it's nice to know I have it. Do I get extra points for bringing my own knife?

The flashlight will be gone in a month or two.

Amy:
Straight men would be "enmeshed in compulsive promiscuity" as well, but for the fact that women are a little more demanding of commitment.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Which is why this blog repeatedly runs dystopian threads about men who want old-style commitment and fatherhood, but get their lives ruined by fickle, selfish women who game the system.

Riiiiight.

So:
Homosexuals make up 2.5-3 percent of the population.

Only 20 percent of them are interested in marriage, or sustaining a relationship that resembles marriage (judging from statistics out of Holland, Canada, and other locales).

... and now we know from this study that at least 50 percent of those "committed relationships" subvert a major condition of marriage.

So we are being asked to severely alter society's definition of marriage for... what percentage of the population?

.5*.2*.03= .003 = 3 thousandths of the population.

That's 3/10 of a percent.

So:
Homosexuals make up 2.5-3 percent of the population.

Only 20 percent of them are interested in marriage, or sustaining a relationship that resembles marriage (judging from statistics out of Holland, Canada, and other locales).

... and now we know from this study that at least 50 percent of those "committed relationships" subvert a major condition of marriage.

So we are being asked to severely alter society's definition of marriage for... what percentage of the population?

.5*.2*.03= .003 = 3 thousandths of the population.

That's 3/10 of a percent.

This is the equivalent of the Jewish population of the US forcing the rest of you to cut off your foreskins, and forego leavened bread on Passover.

To show you're not "haters".

> Which is why this blog
> repeatedly runs dystopian
> threads about men who

These "dystopian threads" aren't pre-produced TV shows selected for 'running' by a station manager, they're the opinions of many people, sparked (almost blindly) by an initiating post. If you don't like what's being said, you can issue a correction. It's easy and it's fun.

> want old-style commitment and
> fatherhood, but get their lives
> ruined by fickle, selfish women
> who game the system.

"Gaming the system" in a context like this is more about incompetence that malice. Everybody's trying to get their needs met. There's no way to do metrics on this, but I think the number of men who get their hearts broken in these ways is probably about the same as the number of women who do. And in about 98.8% of cases for both genders, the brokenhearted party deserves some measure of responsibility... They were blind to faults because they wanted the candy, or too eager to accept glib assurances when discussing mutually unpleasant topics, or they were horny or whatnot.

Amy's point holds, and it sustains a point BD seems eager to make: Women don't want to fuck strangers the way men do. And that's the reason that AIDS never mauled heterosexuals as it did gay males. So can't you two just get along?

> To show you're not "haters".

That's kinda true... A lot of support for this is about teenage social posturing. "Those other kids are SOOOOooooooo immature..."

> (also, it means you're irrational --
> believing there's a big man
> in the sky

Condemning everyone of who believes in God as insane is not productive. Mostly because it makes you look likes a desperately angry person. But also—

My sister worked with the mentally retarded. These children would often be afraid of routine phenomena (baths, garbage disposers, etc.). People had no experience with such children would say "Here's what you do; they like ice cream, right? When it's time for bath, you say 'here's some ice cream', and you serve them half, and after the bath they get the rest! After a few times, they won't be afraid anymore." (As if positive reinforcement was something new on the planet.) My sister –who was much better at keeping her cool in the face of condescension than I am– would then explain that this would only teach the kids to hate and fear ice cream.

Smirking with self-satisfaction that religious people are "irrational" doesn't make them seem less stalwart; it makes rationality seem less important. (And for the record, it is less important than other human characteristics.)

> Also, gays and lesbians and
> their children

Gays and lesbians don't have children, and never have... Not of their own. As noted in our earliest discussions of this here, if this was all about cleaning up the human mess from incompetent hetero pairings, gay marriage would be essentially impossible to resist. (I certainly would have no reason to try.)

But that's NOT how it's being sold. It's all about a childish, foot-stamping, hold-my-breath-'til-I'm-blue unfairness.

And you're going to slam the point with all the anger your heart can hold... Like our new friend Sarah, who's ready to tell everyone else in the world, even our most defenseless members, what they're supposed to be feeling from intimacy.

"That's 3/10 of a percent.

This is the equivalent of the Jewish population of the US forcing the rest of you..."

Majority rules and is always right.
This is why we need to abandon all support of Israel. There's more Muslims. More is gooder.

I must have missed the day in class when it was taught that someone else getting a government-approved signed piece of paper is logically equivalent to your own bodily mutilation. Damn strep throat...

I do agree, Crid, that whining about unfairness is a rather unappealing way to get what you want. Rationality gets you much further.
So why would it change my (theoretical) marriage to know that Ed and Harry down the street can get married? "Protecting" marriage in that sense seems to me like we are protecting the privilege of a select group of people, not a legal right.

> "Protecting" marriage in that sense seems
> to me like we are protecting the privilege of
> a select group of people, not a legal right.

The people I want to "protect" are, in order, children and taxpayers. I think kids deserve a loving mother and a loving father, and am opposed to schemes which will hasten the collapse of those families. GM supporters seem to think marriage privileges can be passed to gays at zero cost to anyone else. (Paradoxically, they think [or at least imply] that there's enough value in marriage that it's immoral not to do so.) In these generations, with a president who's spent twelve trillion dollars in his first year, it's a spectacularly bad time to encourage magical thinking about public finance.

If this money is worth spending, what does the sustaining culture get for its investment in gay marriage?

Furthermore, the language of civil rights strides in recent decades (centuries) seems to have become too dessicated by parched adages and mottoes to convey the spirits they describe: People fear "discrimination" in their thinking as they once feared the Black Death in their own families... But an inability to recognize distinctions is madness. And the popular fascination with "legal rights" seems to have become more about a childish daydream of candyland than a thoughtful understanding of the social cohesion that defends shared interests.

Marriage used to have these standards, a list I pulled out of thin air a few years ago but haven't yet been challenged on— You can marry a person who is of the opposite sex; is consenting; is sane; is within appropriate age boundaries; is not already married; is not a close blood relative; and is otherwise free to marry (being in prison used to be a hindrance, apparently it's not so much anymore, though our Republic seems unimproved.) To argue that this standard shouldn't apply to a "select group of people" when you're so eager to sustain everything else on the list seems dishonest, or maybe just lazy, or cowardly.

So, like, there you go. Honestly, we've been down this a time or two on this blog. Rather than go through it ALL again, you might want to start reading here, and keep hitting the "next" link at the top of the page until you get back to this week.

NumberSix still doesn't get it:
So why would it change my (theoretical) marriage to know that Ed and Harry down the street can get married?
- - - - - - - - - -
If the imprimatur of marriage is given to Ed-n-Harries who a priori agree to open relationships, this eventually impacts the legal and social definition of marriage.

Will you still be able to file for divorce based on infidelity once the definition of marriage has been distorted in this way?

We are already seeing the unanticipated dilemmas/damage caused by "maternity" claims in lesbian divorces.

NumberSix still doesn't get it
I like the "still." That was the first time I have replied to something you have said on this site.
Heterosexual couples may marry while agreeing to open relationships, hence all the swinger websites out there. They file for divorce, if they choose, under "irreconcilable differences," I would think. Do you think that they should have to go through some sort of screening process to get married? What about people who don't want kids? Or people who don't love each other but are desperate to attain the status of "spouse." Or the businessman who marries for money and a name, but has a mistress in a pied-a-terre in the city? These also distort the traditional view of marriage, but I can't regulate, to that extent, which heterosexual couples get married.
And, Ben-David, throwing Latin in your post does not make you sound like more of a legal authority,
deliciae.

NumberSix STILL doesn't get it:
throwing Latin in your post does not make you sound like more of a legal authority,
- - - - - - - - - -
Indeed - I'll try to use simpler words, and maybe you'll understand my point this time.

Among the other reasons people can file for divorce, one - very important - reason is infidelity of a spouse.

Romance and marriage being the complicated things they are - even a spouse that agreed *privately* to an open relationship can use this as a grounds for divorce (for any number of regretful or vindictive reasons).

Because a presumption of sexual fidelity is part of our society's definition of marriage.

What happens when the *public* definition of marriage is stretched to accommodate relationships that are statistically likely to be open?

What happens after the first few divorce lawsuits in which *experts* testify that Ed cannot have expected Harry to be monogomous, because that's not the norm in their subculture?

Do you get it now?

'We are already seeing the unanticipated dilemmas/damage caused by "maternity" claims in lesbian divorces."

And how are those any different form the custody issues that arise in divorces between straight people? Is that what Amy meant about your ability to reason? or is it just an oversight, is it that under your laws there's never any dispute; the children belong to the father?

"Among the other reasons people can file for divorce, one - very important - reason is infidelity of a spouse."

Specious. In most states no reason is required to file for divorce. You're not any more comfortable with facts than you are with logic.

"Because a presumption of sexual fidelity is part of our society's definition of marriage."

You are going to have to be more specific, Ben David, when you use a term like "our society", because you and I do not have the same culture on any level and we don't really live in the same society - in fact we probably don't accept each other's concepts of morality. I know for a fact that I find yours profoundly immoral. So which society are you referring to? I ask because for centuries it has been the presumption that rich and powerful will have mistresses. It's almost a badge of office, whether the man really wants one or not.

No matter what virtues and weaknesses appear in the preceding argument, this...

> You are going to have to be more specific,
> Ben David, when you use a term like "our
> society", because you and I do not have the
> same culture on any level and we don't
> really live in the same society - in fact
> we probably don't accept each other's
> concepts of morality. I know for a fact
> that I find yours profoundly immoral. So
> which society are you referring to?

...Is a sixth-graders' nihilism. The first sip of beer or first puff of a cigarette or first sexual encounter with a coed is usually all that's required to wash that stuff away. A 100-level philosophy class can do it, too. But shouldn't blogs be about something more than that? 'Hey man, in MY world, other people aren't even REAL....'

Jim:
And how are those any different form the custody issues that arise in divorces between straight people?
- - - - - - - -
Aside from both hetero parents usually being blood relations to the child?

D'oh.

In one of her androphile posts, Amy cited a NY Times piece on the repercussions of genetic paternity testing in these situations. You could start there in edumacating yerself.

Further:
Specious. In most states no reason is required to file for divorce.
- - - - - - - -
You obviously haven't much experience with divorce settlements. A lot hinges on assertions of fault by one spouse - money damages, child custody.

Further:
You are going to have to be more specific, Ben David, when you use a term like "our society"
- - - - - - - - - - -
Europe and the larger sphere of countries with Western-influenced legal systems. And all 50 United States.

You can tell the cop all about yer "different culture" while s/he escorts you from property ceded to yer spouse in divorce proceedings...

Amy, Amy - if THIS is the caliber of your "cleanup" crew - oy, mamaleh.

Thank you, Ben-David, for dumbing it down so that I can understand. As you can see from all my previous posts, I do tend toward the monosyllabic.

In response to your elucidation on the subject, I see no reason that what may happen in a theoretical divorce proceeding should have any bearing on why someone can't, not shouldn't, but can't, get married in the first place.

Insulting our kind hostess, who pays for this site, as well as those of us who strive to be mature and rational in our posts, does not go far toward making your point.

Why NumberSix should NOT run for Congress:

I see no reason that what may happen in a theoretical divorce proceeding should have any bearing on why someone can't, not shouldn't, but can't, get married in the first place.
- - - - - - - - -
Why do you think "our kind hostess" posts so many cautionary tales about the unintended consequences of socially "progressive" laws - specifically those related to marriage, divorce, and child custody?

Yes, that's the phrase - "unintended consequences".

You can find those long words in the same dictionary you used for "elucidated"...

The difference is, Amy posts tales of why people shouldn't get married, as opposed to why they legally can't get married. As expressed in her opinion on gay marriage. Amy believes there are many, many reasons why people shouldn't get married, and yet she supports the right to do so if you wish.