John Corvino

Tag: family and relationships

  • Taking on the New Argument Against Gay Marriage

    First published at 365gay.com on August 20, 2010

    Ross Douthat’s recent New York Times op-ed [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09douthat.html?_r=1&ref=rossdouthat] against marriage equality is notable for many things, not least its frank rejection of some standard bad arguments against same-sex marriage.

    Douthat denies that marriage “has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman” and that the nuclear family “is the universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children.”

    “What we think of as ‘traditional marriage,’” he rightly notes, “is not universal.”

    But Douthat’s piece is also notable because he offers a relatively clear version of a less familiar anti-equality argument. Briefly, the argument is that heterosexual relationships differ in important ways from both gay relationships and lesbian relationships, and that stretching marriage to cover all three kinds of pairings (male-female, male-male, female-female) would dilute its purposes.

    In Douthat’s words, preserving lifelong heterosexual monogamy as unique and indispensable “ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.”

    To his credit, Douthat is not simply making the argument that “Straight people are really special and they need a special institution to honor how special they are” (though at times he does seem oblivious to heterosexual privilege, and correspondingly, to the needs and interests of gays and lesbians). Rather, he’s worried about the unique stakes of heterosexual relationships, especially that they make babies. In a follow-up post, he cites the celibate lesbian Catholic writer Eve Tushnet [http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/marriage-in-thick-and-thin/]:

    “If you have a unisex model of marriage, which is what gay marriage requires, you are no longer able to talk about marriage as regulating heterosexuality and therefore you’re not able to say: Look, there are things that are different about heterosexual and homosexual relationships. There are different dangers, there are different challenges, and, therefore, there are probably going to be different rules.”

    It’s the combination of an obvious point with a blatant non-sequitur that makes this argument so specious.

    The obvious point is that straight relationships, gay male relationships, and lesbian relationships each have distinct challenges. (They also share many of the same challenges, a fact that Douthat mostly ignores.)

    And yes, among the unique challenges of heterosexual relationships is that they create babies. No surprise there.

    The non-sequitur is his move from the reasonable premise about distinct challenges for heterosexuals, to the conclusion that extending marriage to gays and lesbians would render it unable to address those heterosexual challenges. Tushnet goes so far as to claim that we would no longer even be able to SAY that there are differences between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, much less maintain marriage in a way that addresses them.

    What amazes me about this conclusion is not just its apparent ignorance of gay and lesbian relationships, and the significant ways in which our challenges—of commitment, care, childrearing, intimacy, security, and so on—overlap with those of our heterosexual neighbors.

    What really amazes me is its apparent ignorance of the great diversity of HETEROSEXUAL relationships, with their “different dangers… different challenges, and…different rules.”

    To take just one example, consider a pair of elderly widowed heterosexuals who marry. Does anyone imagine that their challenges are exactly similar to those of young newlyweds? Does anyone presume that, by treating them as married, we lose the ability to acknowledge that the stakes are different for them (and for society) than they were in the case of their first marriages?

    The fact is that we acknowledge a wide variety of relationships as marriages that are nevertheless “distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit”: some with children, some without; some involving young lovebirds; some involving mature companions; some domestic, some long-distance, and so on.

    Gays and lesbians make up a relatively small minority of the population—smaller, certainly, than infertile and elderly heterosexuals. (Douthat notes that infertile and elderly heterosexuals grew up “as heterosexuals”—which is true, but irrelevant to the point that we can acknowledge their “distinct challenges” while still addressing the needs of the fertile.)

    In order to make his position plausible, Douthat would need to show that the stakes are so radically different for gays or lesbians that any form of marriage that includes this small minority can no longer do the requisite work for (fertile) heterosexuals.

    But at this crucial point Douthat’s argument becomes hopelessly vague. He simply asserts that extending marriage to same-sex couples would weaken its ability to address the thick “interplay of fertility, reproductive impulses and gender differences in heterosexual relationships,” but he never explains why or how this would happen.

    This is not an argument: this is a panic.

  • A Skeptic’s Faith

    First published at 365gay.com on August 13, 2010

    “The trouble with atheism,” my friend said with a smile, “is that you don’t get any holidays.”

    Sometimes even tired jokes can be insightful.

    The friend was a Catholic priest, speaking to me (an atheist) as I spent a week with him and several dozen other priests and brothers. I feel surprisingly at home in such an environment, having once been a candidate for priesthood myself. To cite another tired but true phrase, you can take the boy out of the Church, but you can’t take the Church out of the boy. (The boy asks indulgence from his readers for what’s going to be a strangely personal column.)

    I left the Church, and ultimately, theism, with some ambivalence. While I’m well aware of the Church’s sins—especially against my LGBT sisters and brothers—I’m also the grateful recipient of its gifts: a rich intellectual and aesthetic tradition, a passion for justice, a commitment to human dignity, a willingness to grapple with the “big questions.”

    To be sure, its members and leaders have not always lived up to these ideals. But for the most part, I experienced the Church as a community of remarkable people striving to do their best in a broken world.

    I left it, not from anger, but from philosophical dissatisfaction. In the words of the 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the mysteries of religion are like “wholesome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the virtue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect.”

    As a philosopher, I couldn’t help chewing, trying to make rational sense of it all. In time the doctrines of the “One True Church” started looking no more compelling than the many competing “false” ones. Eventually the whole endeavor of organized religion seemed inadequate: attempts to explain mysteries by appealing to even greater mysteries. I stopped believing.

    That was fifteen years ago. In recent years, I’ve become more outspoken about my skepticism, as I’ve recognized the dangers of people’s thinking that they have infallible backing for their beliefs and prejudices.

    Yet none of that erased my awe at mystery or my longing to understand. I continued to harbor faith in some thread connecting all things, even while I declined to call that elusive thread “God.” Any being who was abstract enough to escape the theological baggage would be too impersonal to be worthy of worship.

    And yet, even a skeptic’s faith can be tested.

    On my second day with the priests I received the shocking news that my best friend from junior high through college was in a coma. Michael (not his real name) and I had last corresponded back in March, when I mentioned him in a column. [http://www.365gay.com/opinion/corvino-remembering-prom/]

    Shortly thereafter Michael learned he had an aggressive cancer—something he kept from most friends, including me. The day after being released from the hospital following chemotherapy, he suffered a stroke. Neurologists weren’t detecting any brain activity, and his partner and family were beginning to discuss removing his ventilator. That’s when I learned of his illness.

    My priest-friends, naturally, started praying. I appreciated the gesture but declined to join them. Even as a theist I had problems with petitionary prayer: If God always knows and does what’s best, why petition him? Wouldn’t it be unjust for Michael’s fate to hinge on the prayers of strangers? In any case, such questions became moot for me as a skeptic: there are indeed atheists in foxholes.

    I was singing with the priests when I got the phone call. To the surprise of his doctors and family, Michael had woken up.

    Let me be clear: I no more attribute this positive turn to divine intervention than I would have attributed his death to divine neglect. Again, if God always does what’s best, then it’s self-serving to praise him only when one likes the results. What tested my skepticism was NOT Michael’s unexpected surfacing. (He’s still responsive, by the way, though his condition is precarious.)

    What tested it, rather, was spending time with this community of fellow truth-seekers and longing once again to be a part of it. Unlike some members of their hierarchy (not to mention their congregations), these men didn’t claim to have all the answers. They acknowledged God as mysterious. But they prayed nonetheless.

    I still don’t understand how to pray before a mystery: to praise its glory, to ask its assistance, to beg its forgiveness. But I feel oddly connected to those who do.

    It’s not the holidays I miss, but the community of seekers that goes with them.

  • What I Learned at Gay Camp

    First published at Between the Lines News on August 5, 2010

    “Remind me, dear,” I said to my partner Mark on the way to the airport, “what I am absolutely, positively not doing again next year?”

    “You are not doing Camp next year,” he dutifully replied.

    We had repeated this dialogue many times in the weeks leading up to Campus Pride’s annual Leadership Camp, a week of intense workshops and other activities for LGBTQ and allied college students, which was held this year at Vanderbilt University July 20-25.

    This was my second year volunteering as a faculty member, and oddly enough, my second year making a pact with Mark to bar me from returning. My reluctance stemmed not from any doubts about the program’s value. Quite the contrary, Camp is one of the most worthwhile experiences I have ever had the privilege of joining. However…

    However, I crave my so-called “free time” in the summer for research and personal projects. It’s the only time when I can have the kind of uninterrupted schedule needed for serious writing. Moreover, I didn’t relish the thought of a week in the Nashville heat in late July, eating college cafeteria food and sleeping on a vinyl mattress in a humid dorm room.

    Sleeping, that is, in the rare moments when we were actually permitted rest. Our Camp schedule stretched from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day, with sessions on various aspects of LGBTQA leadership and development. At the end of each day we held faculty meetings to “process” what had occurred. Processing has its place, but after a grueling day I’d personally rather chew on tin foil than sit in a circle and share how I’m feeling. (“I’m feeling like someone who’d prefer to be sleeping right now, thanks for asking.”)

    So what did I learn at Camp this year?

    I learned that there’s a brilliant group of young leaders poised to do amazing things. Indeed, they are already doing amazing things, making progress on their campuses and in their communities, often against powerful odds.

    I learned that neat boxes into which we place ourselves and others often do a poor job of capturing reality.

    I learned about privilege, a subject that I—like most privileged people—tend to avoid. I hope I learned greater sensitivity to those at the margins of our (already marginalized) community: the gender variant, the differently abled, the economically disadvantaged.

    I learned that there’s a time for action, and then there’s also a time for just being in the moment—to reflect, to “process,” to listen and learn. There’s a time to work within existing structures, and a time for revolution.

    I learned what the “srat squat” is. And that hardly anybody looks good in bright orange.

    I learned that insight sometimes happens in the strangest places—as it did for a friend of mine who was almost moved to tears by a drag performance in the talent show on the last night of Camp. “I had forgotten,” he told me, “about the simple value of joy.”

    I learned—yet again—that despite talk of a “post-gay” generation, young people still struggle to form their identities and to express those identities with confidence and integrity. They need our encouragement and support. And we need theirs, too.

    Truth be told, one of the things I find unsettling about Camp is that it forces me to confront my own insecurities. As the “Gay Moralist,” speaking and writing and debating about gay issues, I’ve developed a pretty hard shell. One needs it in this line of work.

    But one also needs to strip that shell off every once in a while and make oneself vulnerable. As we often said at Camp, disequilibrium is the price of growth. I experienced both disequilibrium and growth in my week with the campers.

    I learned from the speakers—including Robyn Ochs, who taught us about the varieties of sexual orientation and expression; Brian Sims, whose coming-out story as a gay all-American college football player spotlighted the better side of human nature; and transgender activist Mara Keisling, who urged us to put our voices into action and have fun in the process.

    But mostly I learned from the youth. Their integrity inspires me.

    I’m not a sentimental person, and I’m certainly not given to hyperbole. But when students describe Camp as “the best five days of my life thus far,” as so many of them did afterward, I get it. And I just might have to return.

    For more about Campus Pride’s work, visit http://www.campuspride.org. To learn more about Camp and see photos, go to the Campus Pride blog at www.CampusPrideBlog.org.

  • Did the State Create Marriage?

    First published at 365gay.com on July 16, 2010

    Last week a U.S. District Court judge in Boston ruled portions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, prompting the usual cries of “judicial activism” from conservatives. Among the responses was a statement from Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Kentucky, chair of the U.S. Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage.

    “Marriage exists prior to the state and is not open to redefinition by the state,” Kurtz said. “The role of the state, instead, is to respect and reinforce marriage.”

    Archbishop Kurtz is partly right—but he’s also wrong in interesting ways.

    He’s right that marriage is not something the state invents out of thin air. There is a social institution of marriage pre-existing any particular legal incarnation, and part of what legal marriage does is to acknowledge and protect this prior social institution.

    But it doesn’t follow, as the archbishop and other opponents insist, that marriage for gays is therefore impossible by definition. That conclusion is a non-sequitur for several reasons.

    First, legal marriage doesn’t MERELY track the social institution, and it can thus have different boundaries. For an analogy, consider the notion of legal parenthood, which is based in a pre-legal reality of biological parenthood but can vary from it. (Indeed, “legal parenthood” is often most important in those cases where the legal parents are NOT the biological parents.)

    Second, and related, the causal arrow between the legal institution and the social institution goes both ways. The legal reality reflects the social reality and vice-versa.

    That’s one reason why marriage equality scares opponents: the change in legal meaning is bound to effect change in social understanding. Sure, marriage-equality opponents can still teach their children that marriage “really” means something narrower—just as, for example, they can teach their children that a “real” marriage must originate in a church—but the broader legal definition makes those lessons more challenging to impart.

    Third, and perhaps most interesting, there is an emerging social institution of marriage that includes gays. It’s time for the law to catch up to that.

    Last month I participated in a same-sex wedding for some dear friends. The Presbyterian church hosting the ceremony called it a “holy union,” but just about everyone else called it a wedding—including the grooms’ families. There were tuxedos and champagne and cake and presents and all the other usual markers, including teary-eyed families witnessing solemn vows.

    The state where this event occurred (Michigan) forbids legal marriage for gays and lesbians. But each groom’s parents have begun referring to their son’s partner as their “son-in-law,” and everyone around them understands why they do so.

    It’s not a legal reality. But it is a personal and social one.

    A growing number of people know gay and lesbian couples who have been together five, ten, fifteen, twenty years or more. Legally these couples may not be married, but in virtually every other way they are.

    When people vow themselves to each other in the presence of friends and family, set up a household, and build lives together, they create a marriage. That’s how it happened for straight people long before the state started getting involved. And that’s how it’s happening for gay and lesbian couples now.

    So the argument that marriage has a culturally determined meaning, independent of words assigned by law, cuts both ways.

    Archbishop Kurtz is right when he says that “Marriage exists prior to the state.” He’s just wrong to think that it’s solely heterosexual.

  • How Lingle Was Right

    First published at 365gay.com on July 9, 2010

    In vetoing Hawaii’s civil unions bill, Gov. Linda Lingle noted that the bill was “essentially marriage by another name.”

    She has a point.

    Of course I don’t agree with her decision, and I don’t buy her excuse that the issue was too important to be decided by “one person sitting in her office.”

    In fact, that’s exactly how Lingle decided the issue when she chose to veto a measure that not only had passed both houses of the Hawaii legislature, but also had broad polling support of Hawaii’s citizens. Hawaii voters gave the legislature the power to define marriage (let alone civil unions) in 1998, and the Governor’s attempt to deflect responsibility for her veto was as shameful as the veto itself.

    When I say that she has a point, I’m talking about her claim that the bill was “essentially marriage by another name.” Indeed, the bill explicitly stated as much: “partners to a civil union … shall have all the same rights, benefits, protections, and responsibilities under law … as are granted to spouses in a marriage.”

    Like most civil-unions legislation, this bill was an attempt to grant marital rights and responsibilities without using the “M word”—a compromise that, for whatever strange reason, satisfies many opponents of marriage equality. Polls across the country show substantially greater support for civil unions than for marriage equality, even when the statewide rights and responsibilities would be legally identical in theory.

    (Note that I said “in theory.” In practice, the “separate but equal” status of civil unions tends to fall far short of equality—even at the state level.)

    I have long tried to make logical sense of this disparity. It’s not even quite like giving us half a loaf. It’s more like trying to give us a (virtually) full loaf while not calling it bread. (Also, don’t even think about carrying that loaf across state lines.)

    As best as I can tell, the insistence on different names stems from the Definitional Objection to marriage equality—the view that marriage is “by definition” between a man and woman. On this view, calling a same-sex couple “married” is as confused as calling a married man a “bachelor.”

    Okay, but suppose we grant identical legal boundaries to the relationship. Wouldn’t it then be a marriage, legally speaking?

    Here’s where marriage-equality opponents get pushed into a corner. If they answer “yes,” they have to give up the argument that legal same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. If they answer “no,” they find themselves saying that a legally identical relationship isn’t legally identical.

    The only way out of this logical pretzel is to distinguish between two senses of “marriage”—a legal sense, the boundaries of which are drawn however the law says they’re drawn, and a religious or metaphysical sense, the boundaries of which exist independently of human intentions.

    The religious/metaphysical sense is surely what people have in mind when they say that same-sex marriage is impossible by definition. But the law isn’t—or shouldn’t be—in the business of religion or metaphysics. It should be concerned with the legal boundaries, period.

    The problem is that some marriage-equality opponents are so wedded (pardon the pun) to their own religious/metaphysical notion of marriage that they cannot abide a legal understanding that deviates from it.

    Nevertheless, many of these opponents recognize that same-sex couples form loving households and families, that they exist in relationships of mutual care and support, and that the government’s failure to grant those relationships legal recognition has consequences ranging from the inconvenient to the inhumane.

    For these folks, “civil unions” are the ticket. The “civil unions” status allows them to grant the legal recognition without challenging their religious/metaphysical understanding.

    At least, it allows them to do so as long as they don’t think about it too carefully. Because once they do so, they end up precisely where Lingle did: realizing that civil unions are, from a statewide legal standpoint, “essentially marriage by another name.”

    And if the state ought to grant gays and lesbians marriage by another name, wouldn’t it make as much (or more) sense to grant them marriage, period?

    Yes, precisely.

  • Why Weddings?

    First published at 365gay.com on July 2, 2010

    I’m at a wedding for a same-sex couple, in the chapel anteroom before the service, and the grooms are sweating profusely.

    It’s not because they’re nervous. It’s because they’re wearing black wool tuxedos, it’s a humid 90-degree day, and like most old churches, this one isn’t air-conditioned.

    Why would anyone schedule a large ceremony in a non-air-conditioned venue in late June? I’m not religious, but if I were, I’d either schedule my wedding in October or convert to a denomination with modern facilities.

    This church was not the grooms’ first choice. Or their second or third, for that matter. But they wanted a traditional church wedding, and most local churches declined to do a same-sex ceremony.

    The demurring pastors weren’t hostile (though my friends didn’t bother asking those from conservative denominations). Indeed, several were quite apologetic, explaining that they supported the idea but needed more time to acclimate their congregations. Perhaps they were just making excuses to cover their own discomfort, though they seemed sincere.

    So this particular church gets points for courage and open-mindedness. Just not climate control.

    The church is Presbyterian, and they’re calling this event a “holy union.” In the weeks preceding it, some friends have been calling it a “commitment ceremony.” But most of us keep calling it a wedding, because that’s what it feels like, and that’s what it is.

    Indeed, it’s not just a wedding, it’s—by my lights—a big wedding, complete with rehearsal dinner, organ and violin music (the harpsichord couldn’t be tuned due to the heat) and a reception for 160 guests. The grooms registered at Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, and Macy’s; they sent out multi-part invitations with useless sheets of tissue paper inside.

    “Why do you want such a huge production?” I asked them one day.

    A few reasons, they told me. Partly it was because one groom’s siblings all had big weddings, and both grooms love big parties. But mainly it was a way for them to signal to family and friends, “This is real. We mean it. Take it seriously.”

    Rarely in the marriage-equality debate, as we reflect on the question “Why marriage?” do we stop and ask the question “Why weddings?”

    Weddings are, at one level, absurd affairs: the gaudy pageantry, the forced intimacy with distant relatives and acquaintances, the cheesy running commentary from the DJ. They’re expensive, sometimes outrageously so. One designer friend of mine has done a wedding with a $38,000 budget—for the flowers alone. (Not all the decorations, he assured me—just the flowers.)

    We dress in clothes that we’d never wear otherwise (despite what they told you about the bridesmaid dress you just bought); we rent limousines and grand reception halls; we send out invitations requesting the “honour” of people’s presence and the “favour” of their reply, as if we’ve all suddenly become members of the British royal court. Why do we make such a fuss?

    We do it because, like these grooms, we want to say “This is real. We mean it. Take it seriously.” Yes, we can do that with simple affairs, and we can certainly do it with American spelling. But fanfare has its uses. If friends and relatives are going to fly from all around the country and buy you expensive presents and sweat through a long service that’s all about you, you’d better be pretty damn sure about what you’re doing.

    In that way, weddings are not just a way for the couple to tell the world “Take it seriously;” they’re also a way for us to tell them the same. They create a cooperative web of expectation and support. They’re a time-honored ritual for turning partners into spouses; a relationship into a marriage.

    And that’s what we’re doing here today. Despite the fact there is no bride. Despite the fact that this relationship is not legally recognized. Despite the fact that the church has replaced all references to “marriage” in the traditional service with “holy union.”

    It’s a wedding, and it’s a marriage, because the love is real, the commitment is real, the family support is real, the sweat and the tears (of joy) are real. They mean it, and we mean it.

  • Happily Ever After

    First published at 365gay.com on June 25, 2010

    Three years ago I wrote a column “Young Love, Older Love” about a couple I called “Bob” and “Jim.” At the time I wrote [http://www.indegayforum.org/news/show/31405.html]:

    “My partner Mark and I introduced ‘Bob’ and ‘Jim’ at a dinner party at our place. Bob, 31, is recently out of the closet, and Jim, 27, just returned to the U.S. after living overseas for four years. We weren’t trying to play matchmaker when we invited them, though the idea occurred to me as the party approached, and we rearranged the seating right before dinner to maximize their interaction. That was two weeks ago. They’ve been inseparable since.”

    Well, that was almost three years ago, and they’re still inseparable. And this weekend, they’re getting married.

    I toyed with the idea of putting “married” in quotation marks in the last paragraph. Their wedding will be in Michigan, which constitutionally forbids same-sex marriage “or similar union for any purpose.” The Presbyterian Church hosting the event calls it a holy union, and some of our friends are calling it a commitment ceremony.

    But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a wedding: an event that will turn the partners into spouses; their relationship into a marriage. Not in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of Bob and Jim (real names: Boyd and Josh) and their friends and family.

    I don’t believe in fate, and I particularly reject the notion that for every individual, there is a single “soul mate” that you’re destined to be with. Rather, there is a range of people with whom you’re more-or-less compatible, and if you’re prudent and lucky you connect with one.

    Still, the number of improbable twists in Boyd and Josh’s eventual meeting certainly feeds a more romantic, “stars aligning” narrative.

    I met Josh in 2002, when he was an undergraduate at Cornell and I was there to give a talk. He actually missed the talk, but recognized me at a nearby dance club later on. We exchanged hellos, and that was that—or so I thought.

    The following summer Mark and I were at a local Detroit pizzeria when a young man approached us. I only vaguely recognized him. “You won’t remember me,” he said, “but we met last year when you visited Cornell.” Josh had recently graduated, and he was home in Michigan visiting family while preparing to move to Japan to teach English.

    Coincidentally, Mark and I were planning on visiting Japan that August, so we all exchanged e-mails. But we never did follow up, and we fell out of touch.

    Meanwhile, over three years later, Boyd joined our circle of friends—a Southerner transplanted to Detroit.

    Then, in fall of 2007, Mark set up a Facebook profile. Without intending to, he triggered the “Friend Finder” feature that uploads your entire e-mail address book. Josh’s address happened still to be in there, so he got a request. At first he didn’t remember Mark, and he almost rejected the request. But then he looked at his photos, noticed my picture, and put two and two together.

    As it happened, he had just returned to Detroit after spending four years in Japan (three more than planned). What’s more, he was working in the same office complex as Mark. They met for lunch, we invited him to dinner, he and Boyd “clicked”—and the rest, as they say, is history.

    When I wrote the 2007 column, I contrasted the giddiness of young love with the quiet security of more mature relationships:

    “Part of the reason [Boyd] and [Josh] are so giddy right now is that they mutually wonder ‘Does he really like me?’ and then thrill at every affirmative indication. How joyous to expose oneself to another and have the risk rewarded with tenderness.”

    Now Boyd and Josh don’t have to wonder anymore. They know. And this weekend they will pledge before their friends and family “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.”

    A simple hello at an off-campus dance club, another—miles away and months later—at a pizza place, a never-realized Japanese rendezvous, an accidental Facebook friend-request, a dinner party, a courtship, a wedding, a marriage. I don’t believe in fate. But I do believe in love. Congratulations, guys.

  • Crush

    First published at 365gay.com on June 18, 2010

    “I think I’m in love,” my friend announces.

    “You knew him for five minutes,” I retort.

    We’re both exaggerating. My friend—let’s call him Bob—met a guy while traveling, and they hit it off. Literally they spent hours together, though much of that was in, um, “non-verbal” communication. Bob has been thinking about the guy ever since.

    Far be it from me to deny anyone his long walks on the beach, even if both the beach and the walk are imaginary. Though happily married, I have as active a fantasy life as the next guy, and I know from joyous and painful experience the power of a hard crush.

    Bob’s crush has the feature—I’m not sure if it’s an advantage—of having been briefly realized. We’ve all been there. You meet someone cute on vacation. You start flirting, wondering whether he’s going to like you back. You lean in closer, he responds; you touch his hand; he squeezes back; you kiss—yes!

    And then you come home…and daydream.

    You think and talk constantly about the guy, and your friends who are not similarly twitterpated try hard not to look at you like you’re crazy. “You knew him for two days,” they remind you. They don’t understand, right?

    Actually, they do understand. You will too, eventually. Fantasy is not reality.

    Meanwhile, you might as well enjoy it—both the bliss and the angst. Consider this advice a version of “‘tis better to have loved and have lost…” Call it, “‘tis better to have obsessed from distance and have stalked someone’s Facebook page than never to have crushed at all.” Romantic longing is the stuff of which great art is made.

    But don’t overdo it.

    The thing about fantasy relationships is that they place no demands on you. There’s no accountability. For a brief spell, that’s fine, but it’s unhealthy in the long run—especially if it stands in the way of real flesh-and-blood relationships, which it sometimes can.

    You think you are daydreaming about a real flesh-and-blood person, but that’s not quite right. You are daydreaming about a fantasy version of a real flesh-and-blood person. In real life, he retains his human status, with all its strengths and weaknesses, but in your mind, he’s perfect. He never interrupts, never says anything stupid, never gets cranky, never has bad breath.

    The real flesh-and-blood people you meet have all of these flaws, so they don’t measure up. Worse yet, YOU have all of these flaws, which means that the fantasy can affect your own self-esteem.

    Compare this to another kind of fantasy, one that (like Bob’s) also often happens post-vacation: fantasizing about places. How many times have you heard someone say,

    “Oh my God, wasn’t New York/San Francisco/Paris/Puerto Vallarta the best place ever!? I wish I could live there!”

    Yes, New York/San Francisco/Paris/Puerto Vallarta was indeed wonderful, for a whole host of reasons. But one of the reasons was that you were there ON VACATION. Those who actually reside there have their own daily grind to deal with, along with congestion/earthquakes/pollution/sunburn. When their plumbing backs up, they can’t just call the concierge.

    If you always compare the vacation version of these places with the daily-grind version of home, home will pale by contrast. Similarly, if you always compare the fantasy version of your crush object—which, as long as he remains a crush object, is about all you have—with the human version of new acquaintances, old friends, or perhaps even your own partner, the human versions will pale, too.

    This is not to say that crushes never turn into something more enduring. Many full-blooded relationships—including both romances and friendships—started as crushes from a distance. Sometimes people just “click.” Such relationships are often worth exploring.

    So if Bob were asking my advice, I’d tell him to go ahead and pursue his crush. But I’d also tell him to keep his feet on the ground and to remember that fantasy grass is always greener.

  • The Gay Parenting Difference – and Why it Doesn’t Matter to Marriage

    First published at 365gay.com on June 11, 2010

    Opponents of marriage equality often refer to the “untested experiment” of same-sex parenting, asserting that we just don’t know how children in these families will fare over the long haul. They point to the fact that there has never been a significant long-term longitudinal study of such children’s welfare—that is, one that follows the same group of children over time.

    They can no longer make the latter claim.

    In the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, Drs. Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos report on their 25-year study of the psychological adjustment of donor-conceived children in 78 lesbian-parented families. They followed the families from before the children’s birth until they were seventeen years old, interviewing the lesbian birth mothers at various points during this span, as well as interviewing the children at ages 10 and 17.

    They then compared this data with a general normative sample of American youth (known as Achenbach samples), controlling for similar socioeconomic status. The study, which is ongoing, constitutes the largest, longest-running, prospective longitudinal study of same-sex parented families to date, with results published in the peer-reviewed official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    What they found is that the 17-year-old children of the lesbian mothers scored significantly higher than their peers in social and academic competence, and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, and aggressive behavior.

    That’s right: the lesbians’ kids outperformed their peers. This does not surprise me.

    One reason it doesn’t surprise me is because I’ve known lesbian parents, and they rock.

    But it also doesn’t surprise me because of an important general fact about same-sex parents. Unlike heterosexual parents, same-sex parents typically don’t wake up and say “Oops, we’re pregnant.” For them, becoming parents is never a matter of simply going through the motions. It’s something into which they must put a great deal of planning and commitment—factors which translate into positive outcomes, for traditional and non-traditional families alike.

    If I’m right about this, then the moral of the story is not that lesbian parents are better than straight parents. (Sorry, lesbians.) It’s that thoughtful, committed parents are better, and that a lot of lesbian parents fit that description.

    Many marriage-equality opponents claim to know this already. “Sure, there are good lesbian parents out there,” they say. “But on average, two-biological-parent families do better than any other family form.” They will doubtless argue that the current study doesn’t show otherwise, because it doesn’t control for biological relatedness in the Achenbach comparison group.

    Let’s suppose they’re right about all that. What follows?

    What follows is that gays and lesbians shouldn’t kidnap children from their own biological mothers and fathers. Since that’s not happening, the opponents’ point is a red herring.

    I don’t mean to be glib, but from the premise “on average, two-biological-parent families do better than any other family form,” to the conclusion “Therefore, we should not allow same-sex couples to marry,” there are a lot of missing steps. Indeed, more like entire missing staircases. Marriage-equality opponents never acknowledge those missing staircases, much less address them.

    We allow many couples to marry who fall short of the purported parenting ideal—as we should. Notably, we allow stepfamilies to form, even though the very same premise that opponents cite against same-sex-parented families applies to them: “on average, two-biological-parent families do better than any other family form.”

    We allow poor people to marry, people without college degrees to marry, people in rural areas to marry, and so on, even though there is substantial research—far more decisive than that surrounding same-sex parenting—showing that, on average, children fare less well in these environments than in the contrasting ones.

    My point is that the debate over marriage equality is not the same as the debate over parenting ideals—as much as our opponents try to make it so. We need to call them out on this diversion.

    Meanwhile, we should welcome this new study as providing insight into lesbian families. Like any study, it has its limitations. It studies only lesbians, not gay men. The data are based on mothers’ reports (although so are the Achenbach comparison data). The lesbian parents studied were not randomly selected—a procedure that would have been preferable, but also unrealistic in the 1980’s when same-sex families were more often hidden. (On the other hand, it is a prospective study, so volunteers wouldn’t have known ahead of time that their children would fare well.)

    These limitations, and the study’s broader implications, will inevitably be subject to critical debate. That is as it should be.

    But let’s not confuse that debate with the debate over our right to marry.

  • My Daddy’s Name is ‘Donor’

    First published at 365gay.com on June 4, 2010

    In our public debates over marriage equality, Glenn Stanton often holds up a picture, taken from a lesbian parenting website, of a small child wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “My Daddy’s Name is Donor.”

    The line usually elicits a laugh from the audience, prompting Glenn to launch into his “Except it isn’t funny” speech.

    I’m inclined to agree with him.

    It’s not that I oppose reproductive technology or sperm donation per se. And I certainly don’t think that our marriage rights should hinge on the donor-conception debate. By substantial margins, most people who use sperm banks are heterosexual; most lesbians and gays never use sperm banks, and most sperm banks don’t restrict their use to married couples.

    It’s that I think that the creation of new life is a serious matter—about as serious as matters get—and I don’t like reducing moral complexities to tacky t-shirt slogans.

    Which is why I was both intrigued and ultimately disappointed by a report released May 31 by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future at the Institute for American Values, entitled “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation.”

    Intrigued, because donor conception’s effects are well worth studying, and the report contains useful data.

    Disappointed, because the report’s interpretations are exceedingly biased, at times announcing conclusions that seem the opposite of what the data imply.

    For example, in its summary of “Fifteen Major Findings,” number one is that donor offspring “experience profound struggles with their origins and identities.” But the survey never included any questions with the words “profound struggles.” Rather, the researchers base this finding on the fact that 65% of donor offspring agree that “My sperm donor is half of who I am;” 45% agree that “The circumstances of my conception bother me;” and nearly half report that they think about donor conception at least a few times a week.

    Do these answers indicate “profound struggles” for most donor offspring? I doubt it, especially when compared to the rest of the data.

    Buried down at number eleven, we learn that well over half (61%) of donor offspring favor the practice of donor conception.

    Even more telling, roughly three-quarters agree with the statements that “Our society should encourage people to donate their sperm or eggs to other people who want them;” “I think every person has a right to a child;” “Health insurance plans and government policies should make it easier for people to have babies with donated sperm or eggs;” and “Artificial reproductive technologies are good for children because the children are wanted.” These percentages are substantially higher than those for adoptees or children of biological parents.

    Examining the raw data, we also learn that 56% of donor offspring would not discourage a friend from using a sperm donor to have a baby, and fewer than half (48%) agree that it is better to adopt than to use donated sperm or eggs to have a child. Moreover, donor offspring are far more likely than others to become donors themselves.

    And when asked how they feel about being donor-conceived, fewer than 10% of adult donor offspring chose available negative options such as “lonely,” “abandoned,” “angry,” and “freak of nature,” whereas 43% chose “not a big deal.” (Multiple answers were possible for this question.) Less than 1% chose “depressed.”

    Taken together, such data do not suggest the overall negative picture that the authors and promoters of the study are spinning. Quite the contrary.

    The researchers’ bias against these technologies comes out in the very first paragraph. The study’s narrative begins,

    “In 1884, a Philadelphia physician put his female patient to sleep and inseminated her with sperm from a man who was not her husband. The patient became pregnant and bore a child she believed was the couple’s biological offspring.

    “Today, this event occurs every day around the world with the willing consent of women and with the involvement of millions of physicians, technicians, cryoscientists, and accountants.”

    Um, no—unless we’re being really sloppy about what “this event” refers to. Chloroforming a woman without her consent and secretly impregnating her with sperm from a medical student (which is what the physician did in the 1884 case) is not the same—morally or legally—as consensual use of reproductive technology, whatever reasonable concerns we might have about the latter.

    The good news is that the data from the study may be worthwhile even if the researchers’ spin is not.

    The bad news is that the spin is likely to eclipse the data—and to provide more fodder to those who want to scapegoat lesbians and gays in the culture wars.