Q: I know you don’t want to hear this, Dan, but marriage is about babies. By supporting the baby industry — i.e., hetero baby producers — our government keeps the country populated. Gay people can’t reproduce, even if they can raise other hetero people’s kids (adoption) or use other people’s sperm (artificial insemination). But never — and I mean never — can two gay people produce a child on their own. Why is that so freakin’ hard to understand? The natural urge of a man and a woman to make babies is the basis of our existence. Your parents had that urge one time and that’s why you exist. Duh. Santorum is not a basis for a society. Get over it, baby.
Gay marriage is not necessary and takes energy away from hetero baby makin’ and child rearing. We married baby producers assume legal responsibility for the lives of our children. We should be subsidized. It’s a lot of work but worth it to see my genetic material carried into the future. My kids are exactly like me and my wife smooshed together. The future for gays is limited to what they can do in this lifetime. You can’t put gays and straights on the same level — it’s unfair to us baby producers. Now if we need a subcategory, something like “public union, non-producer,” to make everyone feel good about themselves, fine. So be it. But nothing else is as important as making a person. Name one thing as important. I dare you. —Daddy Against Dan
A: Name something more important than making a person? That’s easy: loving a person.
Baby-producin’ straight couples are important, DAD, and there’s nothing about allowing gay people to get married that takes anything away from a pair of married, heterosexual baby producers. (Not that babies are really that scarce a resource. There are too many people on the planet as it is, not too few.) And no one is suggesting that ALL people enter into gay marriages, ya dope, thus denying our “government” a fully populated country. Even if all the GAY people on earth got married tomorrow — and it bears keeping in mind that not all gay people want to get married, could find someone to marry, or would be willing to leave the priesthood in order to marry — there would still be plenty of heteros out there populating the hell out of the place.
But marriage, as currently practiced by heterosexuals, is not about making babies. A modern marriage is whatever two straight people want it to be. It can last a lifetime, it can last an afternoon. It can be sexually exclusive, it can be open. It can be sacred (church, family, priest), or it can be profane (Vegas, strangers, Elvis). The wife can “joyfully submit” to the husband, as Southern Baptist women are encouraged to do, or the husband and wife can be equals. (Or as in the case of my friends Zac and Megan, the husband can joyfully submit to the wife.) And they can make little smooshes of themselves or they can be childless. What makes them married — in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the state — is their love and commitment to each other, not their commitment to growing the population.
It’s only when gays and lesbians want to get married that having kids — or the ability to make them, since plenty of gays and lesbians have them — is trotted out as the sole purpose of marriage. But older straight people get married, as do infertile straight people — even straight people who are in prison for life are allowed to get married. Why should loving, committed gay couples be held to a different standard on marriage? Why does fertility only matter when it comes time to deny gay people the right to marry?
Q: Gay marriage? Two people of the same sex aren’t meant to be married. Just because a whole fucking bunch of you ass-rapers get together and say, “Hey, we should get married!” doesn’t mean you should be able to get married. Maybe a bunch of us straight folks ought to get together and start lobbying for the “right” to sew all your assholes shut. Just because enough people think it should be that way doesn’t mean we should be able to do it. How come humans are the only animals that engage in homosexual activity? Could it be a learned trait? —Max M.
A: Humans aren’t the only animals that engage in homosexual activity, MM, and that’s a well-documented fact. (Check out Bruce Bagemihl’s book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which discusses the homosexual lifestyles of orangutans, whales, warthogs, fruit bats, chaffinches and more than 200 other animals.) And maybe you missed the recent story in The New York Times about two gay male penguins at the Bronx Zoo who adopted and cared for a penguin chick. So it would seem that the big difference between penguins and humans isn’t that we practice homosexuality and penguins don’t, MM, but that straight penguins aren’t threatened by the existence of gay penguins. There is no penguin equivalent of the Traditional Values Coalition, no penguin Gary Bauer or Lou Sheldon, no penguin president trying to prevent so and so from loving each other and adopting chicks, and no straight penguins talking about sewing gay penguins’ assholes shut.
Q: As a straight girl who just recently got engaged, I just wanted to let you know that I’m planning to add donations to Freedom to Marry (www.freedomtomarry.org) to my gift registry. That’s such a great idea! I’ve been pretty upset about the wedding because I hated the idea of so much money being blown on the event. I’d rather have the money go toward something worthwhile. —Jeanne
A: Lots of straight couples wrote in to say that they would add donations to Freedom to Marry to their registry like Jeanne. One reader even suggested that an organization should be founded to encourage other straight people to do the same. I would love to see that happen. If every time a straight couple got married a donation was made to an organization fighting to legalize gay marriage, my God, it would drive the religious fundies absolutely nuts! The very people they claim to be protecting from the “threat” of gay marriage — hetero couples — helping to fund the fight for gay marriage via their own gift registries. I’ve got my hands full doing this column and running www.spreadingsantorum.com, so I can’t take this on. But someone out there reading this should.
Q: Whenever you digress into politics your column becomes totally fucking BORING. Can’t you write an advice column and pursue your political shit somewhere else? I want to read letters from people with sick sexual perversions so I can feel better about my own perversions. OK? —RPK
A: Sorry about this week’s column, RPK. Still, it’s next to impossible to write about sex in the United States without occasionally diving into politics. And remember: I’m not the one politicizing the sex lives of Americans. The Republicans, Bushies and fundamentalists are to blame — they’re the ones politicizing sex by trying to take away our reproductive rights, fight gay marriage and destroy sex education.
But next week, RPK, no politics, I swear. We will instead tackle the issue of pussy farts. Do women ever pass gas through their vaginas? Or do they just pass gas past them? Tune in next week for the shocking truth.
Send letters to [email protected]
