What is it they say about those who cannot remember the past?

Part of what sunk Bush I's reelection chances was the incredibly homophobic speeches by Pats Robertson and Buchanan at the 1992 Republican convention. If the party insists on making this a plank of the party platform, it will hurt them again.

I don't think the majority of Americans necessarily favor gay marriage, but I also don't think they'd favor going out of our way to amend the constitution to ban it forever.

Bush the Elder was sunk by a tax increase and a glance at his wristwatch during a debate.

Gay marriage is here, it's queer, get used to it. What I like most about it is that it brings a grand horror to the hearts of the Bin Ladens of the world. This is not a trivial accomplishment. As an indicator of human decency, it has much to recomend it.

What I dislike is the Stateside postwar fascination with fulfillment through policy which enabled it to sweep popular thought without discussion. Robertson's a Godless fuckwad, but don't kid yourself: Dissent about this is being squelched by a robotic left.

The word "homophobe" describes a particular set of psychological conditions. It does NOT mean "Mean spirited people from the other side of the Mason-Dixon who don't join in my display of reflexive acceptance and showy inclusion."

The worth of marriage as an institution has been improved by regarding it as a contract between two individuals and the whole society. The very sense of petulent righteousness by which it's now (or presently) offered to gays surely diminishes that power. This is not holier-than-thou talk: As a divorced man, I've chipped away at institution myself (in pursuit of fulfillment, not improvement to a community viewed broadly).

Generations of women who were compelled to marry shitheads in order to have families would be bemused to think that nowadays the comforts of marriage are being offered to gays because they deserve "to marry whoever they want."

And we haven't even talked about the kids.

In 200 years, they will certainly think us as monstrous as we regard the slaveholders.

I think it's irrational and stupid to pledge that you'll be with somebody for the rest of your life. That said, if straight people are allowed to be irrational and stupid, gay people should have that right, too.

I don't think I used the term "homophobic" wrongly -- homophobia means fear of homosexuality. Robertson and Buchanan didn't simply politely decline to agree that gays should be equal under the law. Buchanan blamed them for AIDS, and Robertson later blamed them for 9-11. That's fear.

As for the Mason-Dixon line, I am from the South. I'm not sure Buchanan is, but I know Robertson, like much of my family, calls Virginia home.

How is the left "squelching" dissent on this issue? The fact that articles like the linked one even exist seems to me to prove that dissent is out there and vocal. College campuses have speech codes, but they also have other rules society at large is not bound by. The media may have a pro-diversity agenda, but that's mainly so they can sell the maximum amount of papers or whatever.

I'd like to see more elucidation on that last point about kids thinking us monsters 200 years from now. I don't understand it as phrased.

I think Mommies and Daddies are not the same, and that in loving homes, the distinction does a lot of good for kids. Two mommies ain't the same, nor two dads, no matter the distribution of butch & fem.

Gays have been raising kids for thousands of years and will continue to do so, but as this fundamental change has been made to marriage, it would have been REALLY NICE to have just a few months of public discussion about what's best for children. But that's been off limits. Doubt it? Give it a try at a cocktail party sometime this fall. All that's permitted is what we just saw in the reply from our hostess, who reflexively states her concern for the fulfillment of people who are grown ups.

In the quadricentennial (?) in 2176, they're going to look back and ask why we were so unconcerned with the well-being of those least able to care for themselves. We'll should leave a note about it in our autobiographies: It was a boomer thing, you wouldn't understand.

And for the record, I regard the popular use of "homophobe," with its air of dispassionate and scientific condemnation of someone's interior life and courage, to be indiputably squelching. I mean, seriously....

Crid --

All gays want is the same right to beat the shit out their kids that traditional Mommies and Daddies have... A right that -- judging from the domestic violence stats -- many of them take advantage of every single day.

Lena

Lena-

Apples and oranges. It's wrong to compare the worst of heterosexual parenting to the best of gay.

Instantly, you've demonstated how muddled people's thiniking is about this. I AM NOT SAYING THIS TO GIVE YOU A HARD TIME. I seriously believe that folks are in such a hurry to appear compassionate (even to people who are not children) that they rush past all logic. And your backhanded tone is the petulence mentioned above.

People seem really unhappy with their straight parents, and want to believe there's some fundamental tweak to the family composition that will make things better. I say scraping gender diversity is not it.

But while we're in the neighborhood, let's look at the middle ground. Gays have been raising kids since the human dawn, usually by pairing with a spouse of the opposite sex. The truth is, THAT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. There are LOTSA people who have to marry badly for families. But if gays want to marry for fulfillment, perhaps we can ask them to carry some of the terrible social burden of this difficult planet.

I have ideas we can talk about someday...

The software just posted that last comment from me, but it put LENAs name on it! It fucked up.

Either that or my rhetoric was so compelling, the arguments so tightly honed, that Lena agrees with me.

- Cridland

Crid --

I'm backhanded and petulant because I find the tone of straightforward moral seriousness to be a bit self-congratulatory and dull.

Just curious: what part of the country do you live in?

Lena

It's harder for gays to have kids -- if you're a guy and your partner is a guy, accidental pregnancy is not an option -- "Oops, the little strip turned pink." Hence, it's likely that gays and lesbians who have to work very hard to have a child in their lives probably want that child very much, have seriously considered what it means to be a parent, and will be much better parents than those heteros who have kids because they forgot protection some night.

A friend of mine, a stand up comedian, told me that if you're against homosexual sex, you should be all for gay marriage... since nothing destroys sex faster than marriage.

Amy, my love, your comment on gay adoption is right on the money. And the same applies to gay unions. Since our society does not readily accept them, gay lovers in life partnerships have far more challenges to overcome. When they work, it's an accomplishment that overcomes issues that heterosexual marriages don't have.

My uncle and his lover stayed together for 52 years before his lover succumbed to complications arising from Type II diabetes. My uncle is alone now, and I ache for him. I can't comprehend being with someone for that length of time (I haven't even been alive that long) to have them taken from you like that.

Imagine what they must have faced as two young gay men 54 years ago in this country, starting with my "sainted" drunken father -- who "lovingly" referred to me as "the faggot I gave birth to" (up till I heard that remark, I always assumed my MOTHER was the one who gave birth to me. Someone call Ripley's.)-- who, when he learned his brother was gay, beat him up and threw him out of the house. (I better not talk any more about it. I'm just going to get mad if I do.)

How they managed to keep their relationship going for so long is beyond me.

Lena- West LA, Babe. The Wet side of the 405. Or as Zonker Harris once put it, "350 cloudless days a year."

Amy- All that's true, but you ought to be ready to put it in a question rather than an answer. What do you WANT for kids? Of course I want children to be wanted. But I want other things for them as well. I think the mother's femininity is a tremendous, pivitol blessing to a young child. So is a father's masculinity. What's BEST is both. Don't you want what's best? Before I dismiss either resource, I want assurance that things are already going so badly that remedial measures are indicated. Kids deserve a loving mother and a loving father.

Patrick- I have no complaint, except that again we're talking about adults. Now, it's compassionate, it's sensitive, it's just plain sweet, and please believe it, I'm on board your train of Inclusive Rhetoric.

But as a general rule: Earth is a shitbath... Deal! Once you're old enough to be licensed to drive, I shouldnt have to be concerned with your interior life.

POLICY IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

Lena- West LA, Babe. The Wet side of the 405. Or as Zonker Harris once put it, "350 cloudless days a year."

Amy- All that's true, but you ought to be ready to put it in a question rather than an answer. What do you WANT for kids? Of course I want children to be wanted. But I want other things for them as well. I think the mother's femininity is a tremendous, pivitol blessing to a young child. So is a father's masculinity. What's BEST is both. Don't you want what's best? Before I dismiss either resource, I want assurance that things are already going so badly that remedial measures are indicated. Kids deserve a loving mother and a loving father.

Patrick- I have no complaint, except that again we're talking about adults. Now, it's compassionate, it's sensitive, it's just plain sweet, and please believe it, I'm on board your train of Inclusive Rhetoric.

But as a general rule: Earth is a shitbath... Deal! Once you're old enough to be licensed to drive, I shouldnt have to be concerned with your interior life.

POLICY IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

Fuckin' software.

I blame Amy Alkon.

It's hard to continue, because there are a lot of really under-defined terms being used. Crid, when Amy talked about how important it is that a child is "wanted," I think the implication was that children who are wanted are more likely to have their needs cared for over the long term. It is not about the value of an intended versus an unintended pregnancy. I also don't know what you mean by "femininity" and "masculinity." If you're referring to something more substantial than dresses and 3-piece suits, then I don't think they're adequately specific. Traditionally they've been used to divide up between the sexes a really wide range of capabilities that I think every human being possesses to some extent. Personally, my goal has been to develop all of them for myself, regardless of my gender. If I had a child, I'd try to support him or her in doing the same.

I agree with Lena completely. Moreover, it's not like anybody in this country lives on the prairie, sans contact with other humans. We all have television and way too much other media, and are exposed to femininity and masculinity galore. You don't have to have a mommy and a daddy in your family to have men and women in your life. Moreoever, my mother is more the suburban Detroit kind of woman, but I managed, through minimal contact with one of my parents' friends, a very urban, urbane woman, to adopt that woman as my role model. The rest of my role models were literary.

Amy -- I love it when you say things like "I agree with Lena completely" I wish I heard things like that more often! love, Lena

Hmm...perhaps I'm coming down with something!

Yeah, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that "I agree with Lena completely" is code for "Lena, I believe it's time for my pedicure."

I believe it's ALWAYS time for my pedicure, but don't read too much into that!

Masculinity and femininity are not trick words. The conventional meanings were intended.

Lotsa kids can thrive without this or that parent.... Or without ever going to concert, or a picnic, or eating a hot meal or even learning to read. But so what? Many can't. Is that what we WANT?

I doubt you seriously contend that "minimal contact" should be our standard for these fundamental human bonds. I don't want kids to have "role models." I think they need and deserve loving mothers and fathers.

And, just to pretend that we're still on track here.... It's that fundamental need that's not been a topic as gay marriage has come stoling down the pike.

Strolling. Strolling down the pike.

Shit.

Hi Crid --

I'm a gay man who personally could not care less about the right to marry or serve openly in the military. Army sex is probably a lot hotter when it's tinged with the fear of being dishonorably discharged for buggery. I'd really like the gay/lesbian community to put more energy into a social issue that's much more pressing than gay marriage or military service: The relatively high suicide rate among queer teens in the U.S. But right now I'm wondering if we might see fewer of those suicides if social tolerance of gays and lesbians went a bit further than smurfy little TV shows like Will and Grace... maybe so far as to legitimize gay/lesbian domestic partnerships and military service. What do you think?

Lena

Crid --

1. Define masculinity and femininity, in your own words.

2. Describe the roles of masculinity and femininity in childrearing.

Limit your answer to one page.

hugs,
Professor Lena

"...maybe so far as to legitimize gay/lesbian domestic partnerships..."

Loves as tight as the ones you seem to be pointing toward neither need, nor are enobled by, my seal of approval. Turns out folks have been falling in love for millenia without my consent... It's the damndest thang. But for the last time, I just wanna point out: YOU"RE TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO AREN"T CHILDREN. By definition these are people with some resources to defend their interests. Gay marriage is a fundamental change in the way social approval gets passed around (though probably not in the way families themselves get constructed: We agree that gays have been having kids since Creation).

The larger theme in all of this, the chapter heading in the history book of year 2733, may be that this was the time that people decided that fundamental contracts (marriages) were about fulfillment, rather than a statement about the "relationship" between a couple and the whole society. That might turn out to be a really, really bad thing. I think these generations PRESUME that human nature has had some sort of transformative event recently. It hasn't.

Domestic partnerships are not something that get a lot of attention from me. Neither are the concerns of military service. At the end of each deployment, dozens of sailors waddle down the gangplanks of our aircraft carriers PREGNANT... The armed services ARE in transition. They'll work it out. Best nation in the world to lead the way, I think.

Again, there are no magical definitions of masculinity and femininity at work here. These are dirt-common words, and your hesitance to accept them strikes me as telling.

No one in the world can mechanistically describe the workings of boyhood and girldom in family life. That stuff is dark, spirtual, and chaotic and unreasoned. And people who say it isn't are fools. Paglia would probably call it Cthonian. But there's striking and compelling evidence that children deserve loving mothers AND loving fathers.

You ain't giving assignments, we do this for fun. It's a shame that it all goes away with the postings.

Lena, you said:

"Army sex is probably a lot hotter when it's tinged with the fear of being dishonorably discharged for buggery."

It is.