Now with More Gay Banter!

I have a gay co-worker who believed that after the 2004 election, he was a marked man. Chalk it up to a close race and disappointing results for his column, but he was genuinely scared for himself and all gays everywhere.

I have no fears for gays. If you compare the current state of gay-rights affairs with American history, this is 1962. Back then, it was a few months before Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today, the religious right is working hard and fast because it realizes that time is not on their side. Older Americans with a distaste for gay rights are growing older and dying off while younger and more tolerant Americans, who have lived with the notion of gay rights, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Tom Cruise/Ricky Martin/Ellen Degeneres/Al Franken are no longer shocked by the sex lives of their fellow Americans. The Christian Right fully recognizes that the party is almost over.

Case in point: I read a workbook to my daughter during Black History Month about Rosa Parks. When I read the passage that black people weren't allowed to sit next to whites, Nora's face crinkled in disbelief. It made no sense to her at all.

In 10 years, the anti-gay rights foes will be geezers in their wheelchairs complaining about the air conditioning and the loud music in the nursing home. Trust me on this.

Can This -- or Any -- Marriage Be Saved?

The New York Times Magazine had an interesting and respectful profile of Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. If the same magazine ran this piece two years ago, he would have been photographed with the standard greenish, up-from-the-swamp lights the art directors usually reserve for religious, red state conservatives, that the same magazine has used in the past. I still remember one profile of a religious midwestern family the magazine profiled a decade ago -- the photographer shot them like freakish cadavers in a Diane Arbus portfolio.

One passage of the profile struck me of the Catholic senator. The author asked him about if his marriage was threatened by gay marriage and he immediately answered "yes." I was disappointed when then the reporter didn't use a simple follow-up question: why?

Why is Santorum's marriage and my marriage, for that matter, threatened if a gay couple are also joined in wedlock? Why? How is my 13-year union in any way diminished?

Perhaps it's because a club becomes less exclusive when anyone can join, but I am not so sure. I think marriage is a civilizing and settling institution and whether or not two men or two women get married, who the hell cares?

On the other extreme, I feel a couple who live together and have kids without getting married is far more destructive to my family and community than Steve and Jerry who might want to live next to us. The couple who shack up are far-more destructive to my family's sense of marriage, commitment and love than a pair of female gym teachers.

Now that that's settled, the pro-gay marriage folks have to answer one question: If gay men and women can marry, then why can't I marry another woman or my sister or my first cousin?

Two questions to think about...

Let's Get Clinical

Is a movie any good if you would rather watch it again with the sound off? We saw Kinsey last night and although it was quite good, I can't wait to re-watch it with the director's comments on. Liam Neeson and Laura Linney are quite good as Prock and Mac, the married couple who helped shepard post-war America into the sexual revolution. Some conservatives complained that the film didn't make any value judgments on Kinsey's research into sex offenders but the scene with William Sadler as a spectacularly repellant subject nailed it for me. Writer/director Bill Condon also helmed Gods and Monsters, a wonderful picture of 1950s Hollywood through the eyes of the director of The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Condon reminds me of Paul Schrader in that he creates these little worlds that we think we know and then shines a light on the people inside. Definitely check out Kinsey for the smart direction, Frederick Elmes' stirring cinematography, and the stellar performances from Neeson, Linney, Peter Sarsgaard, and a priggish John Lithgow, who sounds like a methodist Foghorn Leghorn. And keep an eye out for recovering actor Chris O'Connell and Tim Hutton, who borrows Sean Penn's mustache from The Falcon and the Snowman.

Armageddon Impatient

It looks like there might be a compromise in the Republican threat of using the nuclear option when it comes to the Senate filibuster. Damn those moderate Republicans and sane Democrats. They are hatching a plan where Dems will approve a vote for some conservative judges if the Republicans promise not to us the NucOp every again. What's going on, people? Shut the Senate down!

The only people who would notice a Senate-free country would be Chris Matthews, the senators themselves, and the liberals who think that the government needs to grow. (I am including the Bush White House in this group, who will go down in history as Big Government Conservatives.)

With the Senate shut down, the member of this august body (Ha!) will be free to explain why this move is such a sad day for the nation. But life will go on, people will wake up and go to work, movies will arrive and leave our local multiplexes, days will pass into months and no one will really notice. If there is another attack on US soil or the Social Security checks stop coming, the senators will have some hard questions to answer. They will have to explain why the Democrats fought to keep the rules as is (sounds conservative, no?), while the Republicans sought to bend the rules in their favor (a liberal notion, donchya think?).

If the senate shuts down in the summer, does it really matter?