A good measure of how badly someone wants something is how he goes about trying to get it. Fringe political candidates, blocking traffic in their flag-capes and foam Statue of Liberty crowns, don’t really want to be president—they just want an hour in the limelight before returning to their jobs at Circuit City and Jack in the Box. I would hope that gay marriage is taken more seriously than that by its proponents, but so far I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

As I’ve written previously, I support gay marriage. It would be dishonest to claim that I have much of an emotional investment in it, though; I didn’t wail or gnash my teeth when Prop 8 was defeated on the California ballot. I was disappointed, because the vote meant that a majority of my fellow Californians had not been persuaded by what I think are eminently reasonable arguments. What I did not think, despite the best efforts of the gay marriage lobby, is: I am surrounded by rabid hatemongers.

Americans are a notoriously impatient people. Consider the argument that gay marriage will take us down the slippery slope to polygamy. By implication, polygamy is so strange, so alien, that even the most fearful conservatives acknowledge it’s a long way off. Does this make any sense? There is far more historical, not to mention biblical, precedent for polygamy. Gay marriage is the truly alien concept; it does the movement no good to pretend otherwise. It stands to reason that millennia of taboo and discomfort do not vanish overnight because you waved a “NO ON H8” banner in the Castro. And yet, as any right-thinking person knows, the culprit must be hate!

I’m not convinced, partly because in the absence of any emotional response to the issue I took some time to come around to the pro-marriage side of things. I saw marriage as one of two things: the sanctification of a relationship before God, in which case the state has nothing whatsoever to do with it, or a completely secular practice designed to encourage social cohesion by providing for the welfare of children, as well as of one or both partners. In that case, then why not vote for more social cohesion?

I was surprised when I learned, belatedly, that in California homosexuals can already enjoy, under the name “civil union,” the same financial and social benefits that accrue to other married couples. It really is all about a word! And as a person who cares about language—I object, for instance, to the substitution of “right” for “privilege” in discourse about health care—I can understand the complaint. Why should it be implied by a word that heterosexual marriage is more meaningful than homosexual union?

It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be implied that any union effected by the state means anything other than tax breaks, inheritance rights, hospital visitation privileges, heath care, and so forth. If it’s sanctification you want, find a church, or get a flute and some incense and play dress-up on your own time—whether you’re gay or straight.

The trouble is that voters who oppose gay marriage on such dispassionate grounds will still be branded bigots. And they won’t like it. And they’ll cast protest votes against gay marriage, because they don’t like to be called monsters on the grounds that they make decisions based on logic rather than emotion, or faith rather than logic, or—take your pick, they don’t like to be called monsters at all.

The prevailing attitude among gay marriage supporters seems to be that if it doesn’t actively bother you, you’re obligated to go along with it, whether or not you think it’s philosophically defensible. Justice used to be blind; now it’s meant to be “chill.” If you have lingering doubts, legal, practical, religious, or otherwise, about something that’s been verboten since the dawn of man, you are an asshole or an idiot, end of story. Here’s a little tip for the gay marriage lobby: Calling people assholes and idiots never persauded them of anything. As an old question has it, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?”

The victory of Barack Obama was muted in California, as his historic election was accompanied by the passage of Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage.

While lots of other states have outlawed marriage between same sex couples, this is the first time that the rights of gays have been rolled back. More than 18,000 couples got married this spring and summer after the California Supreme Court overturned an earlier amendment that banned on same-sex marriage. Those marriages are now in limbo, and future gay marriages are again taboo.

Now I have many friends who are gay and who have been involved in long term relationships. Many of them had filed for domestic partner status with the state or various cities. Some of them had even rushed down to San Francisco's City Hall in 2004 after Gavin Newsom ordered the city government to start marrying people.

Some of these people took advantage of the brief opening in California law to get legally married. And as a straight person, it seemed strange at first to refer to the partner of a friend as her wife. But seconds later, it was wonderful, because she really was her wife. She wasn't some other kind of semantically-challenged partner -- but an actual wife. It seemed revolutionary and obvious at the same time.

That right is now gone. And it has hit people hard. While much of California is delighted over Obama's election, residents here also have a sense that we are a state of bigots, of one group willing to deny others their rights.

Of course California has a long history of denying people their rights. In the mid-19^th century, the Chinese who had come to the west to build the transcontinental railroad were vilified. They were called "Celestials" and were ascribed horrible habits and morals. In 1871, in fact, residents in the small city of Los Angeles rioted against the Chinese. They lynched and killed 19 Chinese men, even hanging some of them from a gate post. California - and the country's - history is littered with violent and mean acts against minorities. The passage of Proposition 8 is one more example of American intolerance.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court decided to review the legality of Proposition 8 using that rationale. The court wants to determine if the proposition uses majority rule to strip rights of a minority group. That action is considered discrimination and it is outlawed in the state constitution.

As soon as the judges indicated they would consider the case, however, conservative activists threatened to start a recall election against any judge who voted to overturn the gay marriage ban. That is blackmail.

Part of California's problem is that it opened up the workings of government to its citizens in 1911 when it elected the Progressive Republican governor Hiram Johnson. He had run on a platform that criticized the dominance of the Southern Pacific Railroad and other business interests. To lesson the grip of industry, California offered citizens the right to recall politicians and circulate petitions and submit them to become law. Johnson also backed women's suffrage and the direct election of U.S. Senators,

But the system has gone haywire in California in so many ways. Legislators now shy away from making hard decisions and passing tough bills. Instead, they punt and put the issues on the ballot.

Citizens can circulate initiative petitions. If they collect enough signatures the petitions are placed on the ballot to be voted on. This process has become an industry in California. Professional organizations hire people to collect signatures. All it takes is enough money. Now if you go to the grocery store, chances are that you will be approached by someone carrying a batch of various petitions on a variety of subjects and asked to sign.

But when these petitions are approved by voters and become law, they cannot be changed by elected officials, so bad laws stay on the books forever. The only recourse is the courts.

It will be at least six months before the California Supreme Court decides the legality of Proposition 8. We have the inauguration of Barak Obama in January to look forward to. I just hope that the generous nature of California, rather than the bigoted one, ultimately prevails.

Frances Dinkelspiel, author of Towers of Gold, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Last week the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the state must extend the legal status of marriage to same-sex couples. Their argument involved a determination that homosexuals constitute a quasi-suspect class, but I'm not really interested in that at the moment. Instead, it's the dissenting arguments that interest me. Debates about same-sex marriage seem to inspire really, really bad arguments, and I thought I would take a moment to review a couple of them.One of the many enlightened arguments against gay marriage

One of these really bad arguments is captured in the phrase "Defense of marriage." The idea, of course, is that allowing same sex couples to marry threatens the marriages of mixed-sex couples. As a member of a mixed-sex marriage myself, I have to confess that I have never been able to ascertain the nature of the threat. The only explanation I can come with, actually, is one that I call the "wow, I could have had a V-8!"principle.

Then there is the argument from "nature." This one is bad on so many levels. Homosexuality is difficult to describe as "unnatural" given that animals practice it with some regularity. But another, more serious, argument is this: animals are governed by nature. Humans are governed by reason, and law. In the Hebrew Bible, God gives the Israelites a single injunction: "Justice, justice, you shall pursue," not "Nature, nature, you shall pursue" (a rather more Aristotelian position, and one forever diminished by Hume's demolition of the is/ought distinction. "There is a special place in Hell,"said Bertrand Russell, "for those philosophers who have refuted Hume." It was in a different context, but the point stands.)

But the really, really bad arguments are the ones that try to define marriage as being about having children and then reason from there. To see just how bad these arguments are, one has to go through them step by step, in each of two distinct iterations.

Version 1 goes like this: Marriage exists in order to "privilege and regulate procreative conduct. The long-standing, fundamental purpose of our marriage laws is to privilege and regulate procreative conduct . . . [therefore] persons who wish to enter into a same sex marriage are not similarly situated to persons who wish to enter into a traditional marriage. The ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry." Those are the words of Justice Peter T. Zarella, dissenting in the Connecticut case.

Note that he does not say "procreation," he says "procreative conduct." What's odd about this formulation, of course, is that is not about childrearing, nor even about procreation. After all, same-sex couples procreate, they just employ different mechanics than many mixed-sex couples. In other words, this argument is not about either children or procreation, it's about sex. Which puts proponents in the extraordinary position of arguing that allowing couples to marry encourages them to engage in sex, and withholding the privileges of marriage will discourage sexual activity. Never mind anti-sodomy laws; to "privilege and regulate procreative conduct" would require laws against contraception and fornication (Otherwise, one has the difficult task of explaining why this particular form of non-procreative conduct is the subject of regulation when all the others are not). As someone once said of Rick Santorum, this argument reflects the finest minds of the 14th century.

But that's still not the worst argument! It is the second version of the argument about children that has the distinction of being the absolute Worst Argument in the World (with apologies to Keith Olbermann.) This is the argument that goes: "It is better for children to have two parents of different sexes; Marriage is about creating an environment for raising children, so that's why same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry."

The reasoning in this argument is so bad I don't know where to begin. Take the arguments about the data. Proponents of this position cite data that they claim shows that the ideal child-rearing environment includes a mixed-sex couple (not a trio or a committee) of parents. The data is disputed: other data show that children raised bysame-sex parents show no higher rates of social pathology than other children, and the studies that are cited tend to be mysteriously lacking in methologies. But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that it is, indeed, the case that all things being equal the ideal environment for childrearing is a mixed-sex couple. The problem, of course, is that all things are never equal. We can take it as given that children are not better off with a man and a woman in the house than with two men or two women if in the case of the mixed-sex couple one of those adults is a child molester, a child beater, a raging alcoholic or a drug addict, if in the case of the same-sex couples none of those things are true. We can say the same thing about unwanted children, children born into families that cannot afford to care for them, or children born to neglectful parents. The case of unwanted children is particularly telling: one thing you know about the children of same-sex couples, they were the result of planned pregnancies. Not -- how did Shakespeare put it? -- "Within a dull, stale, tired bed . . . got 'twixt sleep and wake." (It's the same thing with overseas adoptions. If you travel to China, spend three weeks, then take the long flight back with a baby screaming in your ear the whole way, when you get home you know with absolute certainty that you wanted that baby.

But we do not say that people who are child molesters, child abusers, drug addicts, or neglectful parents may not procreate. We don't even say that such persons may not marry, on the theory that this will dissuade them from procreating. So why is it the case that we have uniquely selected this one criterion of less-than-absolutely-ideal parenting and made it, alone, the basis for restricting access to marriage?

Wait -- the argument turns out to be even worse than that. The whole point of this logic is that if a certain class of people will be sub-optimal parents, we are justified in denying them the legal privileges of marriage, right? Which makes sense only if we assume that not being allowed to be married will make them less likely to raise children (just as the argument for "privileging and regulating" sex assumed that not being married cuts down on sexual activity.) The thing is, we are not talking about a pool of existing children who might be assigned to one set of parents or another by the great bureaucrat in the sky. If the idea is that same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry so that they will be discouraged from having and raising children, the implication is that the children those couples would have if they are allowed to marry are better off never having been born at all.

Yup, I have thought about it carefully and I have decided: This really is the worst argument I have ever heard.

Skeptics of the claim that gay marriage will destroy marriage, the family, and civilization frequently ask just how the hell two gay people getting married can affect anyone but the couple and their friends and family. Well, latte-sippers, here's documentary proof of the perils of your heathen morals:

The take-home question: Will "it's not you, it's gay marriage" become the 21st century's "it's not you, it's me"?

(h/t: John Aravosis)

Monday, June 16, 5:01 p.m.: Robin Tyler and Diane Olsen, who wRobin Tyler And Diane Olsen: Harbingers of the Obama Antichrist Kingdomon their California Supreme Court case to get married, are the first gay couple wed at the Beverly Hills Courthouse. The mayor of San Francisco officiates at the wedding of a lesbian couple in their eighties. (The ceremony was delayed because one of the octogenarian's dentures was stuck in the other's birth canal. Surgeons arrived promptly.) In heaven, Jesus cries and contemplates suicide, but settles on slashing his wrists in the bathtub with a Gillette Venus Vibrance Soothing Vibrations Razor for Women.

Tuesday, June 17, 8 a.m.: According to Agence France Presse (which is, let us not forget, French, and therefore will be referred to henceforth as Agence Freedom Presse), courthouses and clerks across California issued a "tidal wave of marriages" to same-sex couples, including Star Trek actor George Takei, who commands his new husband to immediately "beam up—you know where." Elsewhere in Hollywood, William Shatner contemplates facing the forbidden, sultry truth that resides—has always resided—at the bottom of his soul and the center of his loins, but concludes, "I can't do it, Captain... I... just... don't... have... the... power."

9:30 a.m.: Thousands of gay couples are now officially married. Experts suggest that half of the couples in state will wed, along with nearly 70,000 from other states. Right-wing radio personalities shriek that heterosexual marriage will cease to exist due to the "gay agenda," whatever that is.

9:37 a.m.: Heterosexual marriage ceases to exist. Millions upon millions of Californian adults file for divorce and commence sodomizing one another. (According to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, this turn of events is "inexplicable and vicious." He then paused to wipe his semen-drenched beard with one hand and give Anderson Cooper a reach-around with the other; Lou Dobbs masturbated while videotaping his colleagues, although he was unable to focus due to having Larry King's shriveled member inside of him) A homosexual orgy of biblical proportions stretches from San Diego to Santa Cruz, winning the Guinness World Record for "consecutive leapfrog train." Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who enters his Junior costar Danny DeVito, proclaims himself "the Terminator—of your ass."

10:55 a.m.: The California State Senate dissolves the California Supreme Court, which is promptly replaced with the Rules Committee of the North American Man-Boy Love Association. (In unrelated news, former Malcom in the Middle star Frankie Muniz dies of severe rectal bleeding. He should have never agreed to literally become "Malcolm in the Middle.")

12:46 p.m.: No longer satisfied with their newfound addiction to homosexual lovemaking, Californians turn their sexual attention to household pets, exotic zoo animals, seagulls, livestock, and Robin Williams. The entity formerly known as the California Supreme Court legalizes human-beast marriage, but only for same-sex humans and beasts.

2:19 p.m.: Every pregnant woman in California secures an immediate abortion, no matter how many months their fetus has had to develop, because procreation is a symbol of the Time That Once Was and Must Never Be Spoken Of. Everyone under the age of 60 is sterilized, either by chemicals or blades, which isn't actually necessary considering that everyone is exclusively fucking those of their own gender, but you can never be too safe.

3:39 p.m.: The American Family Association challenges the California Supreme Court decision; the U.S. Supreme Court immediately takes the case, but the plan backfires on the social conservatives when Justices Scalia and Alito realize that Justice Roberts is a pretty handsome guy for 53. (He's no John Edwards, of course, but somehow he is both rugged and boyish, which drives Clarence Thomas absolutely insane.) The Supremes rule that Christianity is illegal and shall henceforth be replaced with the Temple of Phallus.

3:45 p.m.: Sen. Barack Obama announces that he is the Antichrist, made flesh by the devil seed of Lucifer and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had tons of gay sex. Sen. John McCain bows to Obama's awesome Satanic power, pledges all of his delegates to the Democratic nominee-in-waiting and then desperately suckles upon the younger black man's scrotum, which tastes like a combination of honey and rose petals.

5:26 p.m.: The United Nations acknowledges King Obama as Supreme Leader of the World.

5:27 p.m.: The white race is enslaved. Islam owns the earth.

5:28 p.m.: Jesus Christ returns from the astral plane, defeats the Kingdom of Beelzebub with his Majestic Sword of Glory, liberates the captives, raises the dead from their graves, and reigns for a thousand years of tranquility and light. (The scrapes on his wrists have healed. He didn't really want to die anyway; he just wanted the girls at school to notice how much they hurt his feelings when they ignored him.) Nobody ever has gay sex again, because heaven on earth is gay enough already. Seriously. You remember the last five minutes of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King? It's just like that. Only gayer.

Whenever a politician, pundit or celebrity says something amazingly stupid, offensive or naive, "The Gaffe Factory" is here to document it.

This week we have a gem from Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, explaining why he would outlaw abortion and gay marriage (italics mine):

"It's an issue that goes to the very heart of our civilization of all people being equal, endowed by their creator with alienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Gay, Pro-Choice Squirrel Reacts: to Huckabee's words Welcome to the first installment of Words or Turds, where each week, we'll bring you a money quote on God, faith, religion, or any number of other shadowy concepts. It's up to you to decide and explain whether they're words or turds. This week, because he's just got so much to say, here are two gems from from Republican wannabe-president Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee on the problems of the Constitution, as it relates to and deals with issues of abortion and gay marriage:

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards, rather than try to change God's standards."

Huckabee on why he feels so at home in South Carolina:

“South Carolina’s a great place for me. I know how to eat grits. I speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel. We’re on the same wavelength. I bet you never did this: When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they’d let us use in the dorms, and we would fry squirrel in a popcorn popper in our dorm rooms.”

Possible Tuesday Taste Test recipe? Perhaps! But for now, we're more interested to know whether you think Huckabee is a man of words or turds. This one's a real head-scratcher, right?

A Pew study reveals that Generation Y is more liberal than any other age group -- including Gen X when they were our age. Nearly 60 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds choose Democratic candidates over Republicans. Cock the Vote: Gays are our friendsThis reverses a trend from the '80s and '90s of younger voters being more likely to vote conservative.

Why is this? Aside from the fact that a Republican commander-in-chief has sent more than 3,000 of us to our bloody deaths, Gen Y is far more open to gay marriage than older generations. Our friends don't feel the need to hide their sexuality, unlike many right-wing politicians and religious leaders. As the GOP continues to bash our buddies as harbingers of the apocalypse, their numbers will continue to shrink faster than my anatomy in a room full of naked guys (bronzed... jacked... dripping with sweat...), because I am so totally 93 percent not gay. (But seriously, who wouldn't go for Shatner? Especially today?)

It’s the fifth anniversary of Trembling Before God, the landmark documentary that showed the world that, while there may be no gays in Iran, there are most assuredly gays and lesbians among Orthodox Jews. How much have attitudes changed among the Orthodox since Trembling Before God came out?

Last week Bangitout.com published 72 Questions On Gay Marriage, by Martin Bodek, an Orthodox Jew who wants to know how supporters of same-sex marriage suppose this institution would fit into the strictures of traditional Jewish law, or halacha. Some of the questions are bawdy or impertinent--and those are the ones that aren't totally incomprehensible to secular heathen (what in the gods' names is an aufruf, and why does it make men want to throw candy?)

Still, this list looks like progress to us. Pre-TBG, would it even have occurred to anyone to write up such a list?

So we asked Steve Greenberg, the world’s first openly gay Orthodox rabbi, to read the 72 questions (or shaylas) and tell us what to make of all this.

Check out a few of Bodek’s questions below, and then click the vid to find out whether Rabbi Greenberg’s partner is called a rebbitzin, and whether 72 Halachic Questions On Gay Marriage is obnoxious, ahead of the curve, or both.

Questions for two men

• Do they both break the glass?
• Which one is not allowed to be on bottom?
  
• A “Moch dachuk” must be pretty painful, no?
  
• Do either of them have to cover their hair?
  
• If they refuse to divorce each other, whose legs get broken?

Questions For Two Women

• Do they both have to cover their hair?
• Which one is not allowed to be on top?
• Are they automatic agunahs if they want to get divorced?
• If their son is from an anonymous donor, what name does he use for an aliyah?
• For the aufruf, do the men throw candies into the ezras nashim?
• Are they allowed to be meyached with other people’s wives?

Questions for Both

• Whose last name do they use?
• Who gets first dibs on the baby naming?
  
• For shidduch dates, who calls, does the pickup and reports first to the shadchen?
  
• Do they have to use a hole in the sheet?

See the rest of the 72 Questions, here.

Below, watch the response of Steve Greenberg, the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi.

Pro-Gay Marriage: San Diego Mayor Jerry SandersI always suspected that the folks over at National Review were heartless and lacked a shred of human feeling, and now I have former Bush administration speechwriter Joshua Trevino to confirm it for me. Writing about conservative Republican San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders's tearful announcement of his support for gay marriage last month, Trevino admits, "It was a moving sight for anyone with a heart and a shred of human feeling." The reason for the Mayor's change of heart, according to Trevino, is "his daughter’s homosexuality."

Bemoaning those who have heaped plaudits upon Sanders for his courage, Trevino offers this total non sequitur:

Courage typically signifies the hewing to core principles in the face of adversity, not their abandonment in the face of personal vicissitude. In the 1988 presidential campaign, the second debate between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis was marked by the infamous query from moderator Bernard Shaw: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” Dukakis sealed his electoral fate by sticking to his guns on the issue, reminding Shaw, “I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life.” One imagines Jerry Sanders in that position, announcing that perhaps, with a family member involved, he is not so opposed to the death penalty after all. The Mayor of San Diego has therefore achieved something truly remarkable, in making us sentimental for the political courage of Michael Dukakis.

Say what you will about Michael Dukakis' debate performance (and I never thought I'd be defending The Duke); it sure took courage for him to stick to his guns and maintain his principled opposition to the death penalty in response to a question so clearly intended to elicit a flip-flop. Of course, there's no way to know if Dukakis would actually maintain his opposition if his wife ever were to be raped and murdered, but that's beside the point. Dukakis didn't give the easy answer the pundits expected him to give. In turn, he came off looking cold and politically stupid, but sometimes there are more important thing in the world than giving focus group answers to focus group questions.

What isn't beside the point is Trevino's assertion that Sanders' newfound support for gay marriage rests entirely upon the fact that the Mayor's daughter is gay, that it's all due to the understandable "parental impetus" of "protecting his daughter." I never thought I'd see the day when a true-blue conservative claims that these familial instincts represent a negative force on politics, but then again, gays are being bashed so all bets are off.

The case for gay marriage is, without question, for those of us who are gay or have family members or friends who are gay, personal. But it is no more personal than the cause of black civil rights was to black people (or their friends and relatives) in the 1960's.

It must be a shared principal of any liberal politics that we're all in this together--irrespective of our immutable traits. Trevino's inability to recognize homosexuals as homosexuals--in his ridiculous assertion that "Sanders' lesbian daughter has the same marital rights now as does his other, heterosexual daughter"--indicates that he's incapable of even empathizing with gays, never mind capable of seeing why they're deserving of equal citizenship. Of this assertion, a friend writes: "Fine, but would you want to be married to a lesbian? Another way to put it: Are former Bush speechwriters really that desperate for a date?" Apparently they are.

Andrew Sullivan is unsurprisingly overjoyed:

Looking back on two decades of struggle, past the ashes of so many, to the clearing on which we now stand, it's hard not to weep. Two decades ago, marriage for gays was a pipe-dream. Some of us were ridiculed for even thinking of the idea. And yet here we are. Past the vicious attack from the president, past the cynical manipulation by Rove, past the cowardice of so many Democrats, past the rank hypocrisy of the Clintons, past the inertia of the Human Rights Campaign, past the false dawn in San Francisco, and the countless, countless debates and speeches and books and articles and op-eds. Yes, we have much more to do. Yes, we still have to win over those who see our loves as somehow destructive of the families we seek merely to affirm. Yes, we don't have federal recognition of our basic civic equality. Yes, in many, many states, we have been locked out of equality for a generation, because of the politics of fear and backlash. But look how far we've come. From a viral holocaust to full equality - somewhere in America, in the commonwealth where American freedom was born. In two decades. This is history. What a privilege to have witnessed it.

I never thought gay marriage was a high priority for the country, but that's easy for me to say given that I and another failed state heterosexual could tie the knot and get all sorts of nice tax and estate benefits.

The best argument against the legalization of gay marriage has actually come from within the gay community itself: Isn't this going to end the long, proud tradition of living at an acute angle to society, being the witty and subversive uncle who always brings a "friend" home for Thanksgiving?  W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman made de facto couplehood work; so did Gore Vidal and Howard Austen.

Marriage is very bourgeois, but then, Andrew long ago predicted the end of gay culture. Not that there's anything wrong with that.