BOOK RECOMMENDATION: If you’re following the same-sex marriage stuff, you should read Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World, a history of the idea of romantic love. You should read it anyway–it’s brilliant, provocative, and a real rollercoaster read–but it’s especially relevant now. Read more

FUN WITH NICHES! I have this odd feeling that some of the posts below will lose me a bit of the comics-oriented readership I picked up last week. Ah well. Today I read Daredevil: Wake Up!, which was really good. I’m generally opposed to comics about traumatized children–it’s pretty hard to say something that hasn’t been said a thousand times, and so the comics end up feeling exploitative–this is one reason I almost never read a Batman comic. All those... Read more

OTHER HOMOPOSTAL STUFF: So I don’t think the same-sex marriage debate needs to be about homosexuality itself. But for those interested, I figured I’d point out some of my past posts on queer stuff. The easiest thing to do is to start here and scroll down. After the first post linked there, it gets relentlessly Andrew Sullivan-and-the-Church-focused, which I know isn’t everybody’s thing, but I don’t write about this subject super often. Again, I think this followed by this should... Read more

HELP UNQUALIFIED OFFERINGS BUY A COMPUTER! He will have a difficult time blogging until he gets one. So please hit the PayPal thingee–it’s worth it! (I will be doing this tomorrow.) Read more

INSTANT WATER–JUST ADD WATER! Is this for real? If so, that’s pretty darn cool. Via Kesher Talk. Read more

CIVIL UNIONS: So now, what do I think about civil unions, which confer lots of the practical benefits of marriage without the name? My thoughts on this are kind of confused, so instead of laying out a solid position I’m going to talk about the concerns I have, the things I’m trying to weigh and juggle. 1) Many, though certainly not all, of the practical benefits of marriage can already be cobbled together through things like medical power of attorney.... Read more

MINORITY REPORTS: One of the questions you hear a lot in the same-sex marriage debate is, “How can such a small minority of people actually affect the vast majority of marriages?” There are at least three reasons to think it could. 1) American culture has always been strongly affected by minorities. I wrote about black culture’s impact on the broader culture here. Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, “And, as with most developments in gay culture, they [= ‘bears’] could well influence... Read more

QUESTION IN THREE ACTS: So here’s a place to start with the spate of same-sex marriage posts. (Some of this language will probably be repeated from previous posts, but I’m hoping that by getting it all together in somewhat more coherent form I’ll make my position clearer. This turned out a lot longer than I expected, so I’m splitting it into three posts: question, my answer, and friendship.) Why is marriage honored in our society and in our law? It... Read more

I see no reason to expect that homosexual couples will have (even!) the same emphasis on and belief in sexual exclusivity that married couples do today. In the post above “Question in Three Acts,” I’ll talk briefly (more on this tomorrow) about why that matters for heterosexual couples. For the moment I’ll just wonder whether gay activists really think marriage–an institution developed emphatically without homosexual couples in mind–is an appropriate model for homosexual relationships, or whether something more like friendship... Read more

LATER TODAY, after I’ve had more coffee (slaver! growl!): all marriage all the time. A passel o’ same-sex marriage stuff. Some people may be thinking, “Yay!” Many more are thinking, “Well, guess I don’t need to check in with her until Thursday.” But this is my blog, you just live in it, so same-sex marriage it is. Previous posts on this subject: long thing about cohabitation and marriage; shorter postscript on implications for same-sex marriage; an I.O.U. which I hope... Read more