SSM: WHY? Got a couple interesting emails today, asking why I spend so much of my time on same-sex marriage lately. The emails were phrased in sharply personal language, but whatever, it’s certainly a fair question.

Partly, honestly, it’s just the tidal rhythms of my attention. Sometimes I am superjournalistic, unable to think of anything except how I can affect the daily surf of the news. For the past couple months, though, I’ve been in exactly the opposite mode. I’ve been thinking almost exclusively about my fiction work. It’s hard to pull myself away long enough to earn the rent by doing basic journalism work. And this blog has reflected that seasonal shift in my interests. It’s moved from politics and high-philosophical talk to a much more cultural/artistic focus. Same-sex marriage is the exception to a general “all arts all the time” rule.

It’s the exception for six main reasons. In reverse order of importance:

6) I’m getting paid for this. I’ve been doing piecework for the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy for a while, and just accepted a part-time editing job there. I’m supposed to be thinking about this stuff!

5) I do think same-sex marriage is about marriage. And I do marriage/chastity counseling once a week. I used to think of it as “pro-life” counseling, meaning anti-abortion. That was pretty short-sighted of me. In fact, my volunteer job (at a pro-life pregnancy center) is about women who want to make marriages but have no role models and no sense of how to go about that. My volunteer job is about the necessity of marriage, the fragility of marriage, and the devastation of a marriageless culture. So yeah, this is personal.

4) I don’t want this to be a solely cultural-criticism blog. Just a personal preference.

3) I think about same-sex marriage in highly literary terms. I think those terms are accurate and translatable into policy language. I think you can talk about the deepest needs of the human heart–the need for a role, the need for a gendered heroism, the need for a mask, for example–without flying off into academia-speak.

2) I’m queer, and so people might listen to me who would otherwise not listen to an opponent of same-sex marriage. You all can vote amongst yourselves as to whether I’m the Benedict Arnold of the Gay Community or its Elia Kazan, or whatever. I can spend my time ripping strips off myself, or I can spend my time not caring, and I think I was supposed to learn in high school that the former route is… not productive.

1) I’m saying stuff I’m not hearing other people saying.

I do hope that helps.