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Marriage QUESTIONS

Please someone explain to me, how does gay marriage supposedly threaten heterosexual marriage?

I went to a wedding last weekend, a lovely affair. But a couple weeks earlier, there was a party, and at least one of the guests used that “ball and chain” language that I THOUGHT went out of fashion last century.

It seems to me that marriage IS under attack, usually by people who are in it. The standard, now a cliched statement from straight people in “support” of gay marriage is something like: “Why shouldn’t they have a chance to be as miserable as we are?” Meh.

I’m curious about how this Prop 8 case will work out. If it is not appealed, then gay marriage would be permissible in California. If it IS appealed, and Prop 8 is ruled unconstitutional, then gay marriage would likely be permissible in all of the Ninth Circuit. And if the case goes to the Supreme Court, which most people think is inevitable -though I’m not sure, and Prop 8 loses, gay marriage could be legal across the country. BTW, you can read the transcript of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger HERE.

My thought about the case NOT going to SCOTUS is that if the Prop 8 supporters thought they were going to fail there, perhaps they would cut their losses earlier. Also, there’s the matter of standing; as Arthur and Jason noted in their 2Political podcast recently, only certain parties are allowed to appeal. As the named defendant, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could appeal, but based on his support for gay marriage, that’s unlikely to happen.

In the “it would upset me if it weren’t so predictable” department, Human Rights Campaign reports that at one of their rallies on their anti-equality summer tour, the president of the far-right National Organization for Marriage (NOM) had the gall to compare their bigoted cause to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “What if Martin Luther King, Jr. would have listened to those who tried to silence him and tell him that his faith has no place in the public square?” he asked. He then told the crowd they were “part of a new civil rights group.”

Conversely, here’s a tongue-in-cheek literal reading of Leviticus 20:13 making gay sex Biblically OK.

So, my questions:
1) Is the culture hostile to marriage? This could be anything you have in mind, from inflexibility in the workplace to tax laws.
2) Would it be better if marriage were separated as a legal function of the church, allowing churches the ability to give their religious blessing, similar to what is being espoused here? I appreciate the point, but, as a matter of strategy, I’m very much against it. Removal of the state function of marriage – and is IS a state function, as in “By the powers invested in me by the state of New York” – runs so contrary to centuries of embedded precedent that it will inevitably be perceived as an attack on the church, even by many who are supportive of gay marriage.
3) Please someone explain to me, how does gay marriage supposedly threaten heterosexual marriage? Seriously. Not how you feel, but what the argument is. Is it that…no, I really don’t know.
4) Will the Perry case make it to the Supreme Court? If so, how will the court rule? I’ve convinced that they will rule to overturn Prop 8.

Eric Carmen and the Young Rascals?

There IS a Raspberries/Rascals link.

I was listening to one of my two favorite podcasters this week – yes, Arthur, you’re the other one – and he was giving the rock birthdays for August 11. He said, “1949, Eric Carmen, singer for The Young Rascals, The Raspberries, and a solo career.”

I’m not a big Eric Carmen fan, and I own none of his music. It’s not that I object to his songs such as the Raspberries’ Go All The Way or his All By Myself, where he nicks Rachmaninoff; it just didn’t reach the level of purchasing them.

Conversely, I own a LOT of the Young Rascals, who later became the Rascals. They had Top 10 hits such as Good Lovin’, Groovin’, A Girl Like You, How Can I Be Sure, A Beautiful Morning, and People Got To Be Free. At the moment the Beatles broke up, the Rascals were arguably my favorite active band. I have (present tense) at least eight of their albums on vinyl. And as an inveterate reader of liner notes, I had NO recollection of Eric Carmen with the Rascals.

So I checked with the podcaster, who pointed to the This Day In Music website that he always checks. The same info shows up in other sites, citing TDIM. But there is no evidence that this is actually true on any site dedicated to either artist or in any of my music reference books. So how did this mistake get made?

My theories abound:

1) The groups are alphabetically close. Perhaps the information about Carmen and the Raspberries got duplicated in the Rascals info in some database.

2) The stories about the namings of the groups are remarkably similar. According to this site, and confirmed elsewhere, the character Froggy in the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies of the early 1920s, which later appeared on television, would often say, “Oh, raspberries!” Eric Carmen said it as a joke in a discussion about picking the band’s name, but the others thought it was the right selection. The Young Rascals also were named for the Little Rascals.

3) There IS a Raspberries/Rascals link. “The band Fotomaker was formed in 1978 by bassist Gene Cornish and drummer Dino Danelli, former members of the seminal 1960s power-pop group The Rascals (a/k/a “The Young Rascals”). Rounding out the group was guitarist Wally Bryson, formerly of power-pop hitmakers The Raspberries (which featured singer Eric Carmen)…”

Goodness knows one cannot “correct the Internet”, but in this narrow case, I’m compelled to try. Or if I’ve gotten it wrong, I’d like some proof.

30-Day Challenge: Day 16 – Future Tattoos

I’m just not that into suffering for my (body) art.

For the longest time, I had zero interest in tattoos. I associated them with drunken sailors and the people with whom they spent time.

Then I’ve discovered in recent years that they have gone mainstream. More than that, on some people, they actually look good. Although there was this woman on TV this month who had some design on her neck that made her look ravaged by disease.

I am still concerned that while the design may look OK when it’s new, it may look less desirable when the body changes. Or the message that seemed on target at the time may end up feeling less than appropriate a few years down the road.

The other thing is that I’m just not that into suffering for my (body) art, and dermal abrasion, removing said tattoos, would arguably be worse.

Moreover, I would be ineligible to give blood for a year, if I were to get a tattoo, and blood donating I’m convinced is as advantageous to me as it is beneficial to the recipients.

I’m not likely to get a tattoo. But if I were, there is little doubt what it would look like.

Or a variation thereof.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Kids Are All Right

Metroland critic Laura Leon: “These are the kind of real-life stories that everybody deals with…”

After my wife and I had our almost weekly summer date and saw the movie The Kids Are All Right, she noted that it was, in many ways, a very conventional, slice-of-life, film about the travails of family life. And I realized, that, at the core, she was absolutely right.

It’s a story about a long-time committed couple. They deal with the universal rigors of relationship, which was described as a marathon, not a sprint. It also involves their teenage kids, a girl just turning 18, and a boy, 15, dealing with sexuality, bullying, alcohol, and identity, just like many people.

OK, so not every movie involves a lesbian couple who were each artificially inseminated by an anonymous donor, who becomes less than anonymous when the boy gets the girl to find out who their common father is. And gay men’s porn is not always a family talking point.

What makes this an intriguing story was the script and direction of Lisa Cholodenko, creator of High Art and Laurel Canyon. Like those two films, as film critic Mick LaSalle noted, features “somebody from a world a little less structured who seduces someone from a world a little more regimented.”

The film is also blessed by the casting of Annette Bening, as a Type A doctor, and Julianne Moore, as her more bohemian partner. Their “unexotic, unglamorous and totally routine” lives are upended by the bio-dad (Mark Ruffalo); how (and why) he changes the family dynamic is an important part of the tale. A few critics carped that, in the end, conventionality, of a sort, is restored, but I think that’s the point.

If you’re looking for non-stop, wall-to-wall action, do not see this film. But if you want to see an interesting look at basic truths of family dynamics, check this out. As Metroland critic Laura Leon put it: “It’s kind of ironic that, finally, a movie about how long-term relationships change and transform over time—in short, what happens to just about everybody—has come out and it’s very wonderful…these are the kind of real-life stories that everybody deals with, and why aren’t we seeing more of them, instead of Clash of the Cyborg Mutants in 3D, in cinemas?”

The movie trailer.
***

The only downside to the movie: no music by the Who.

D is for Dad’s Death

Les Green was the first black registered auctioneer in the state of North Carolina.

Rescuing a bird

Hmm. I said to myself, “Self, do I really want to do this?” I had a whole ‘nother blog post planned for today. but it IS the anniversary of the death of my father, Les Green. Moreover, it’s the 10th anniversary this very day. You know how those round numbers often hold special significance.

Top picture: Oui, c’est moi de l’enfant.

I wrote about the circumstances of his death five years ago. Here’s the peculiar thing: I misremembered the date that he told us he had prostate cancer! I wrote that he informed us in January 1998, when in fact it was January 1997, during the same trip we had the conversation about spanking.

How could I forget that detail? Easy: as I said before, he was SO cavalier about it. It was as though he were discussing twisting his ankle. No big deal.

And I suppose maybe that’s what he thought. As the Mayo Clinic put it, “Prostate cancer that is detected early — when it’s still confined to the prostate gland — has a better chance of successful treatment.”

In many ways, my dad was pretty remarkable. He graduated from high school – barely, by all accounts – went into the Army in 1945 and 1946. Eventually, he had a number of different jobs, from florist and sign painter to a vice-president of a large construction company. He was rather the epitome of the “self-made man.”

He also played guitar, largely self-taught, and sang. He billed himself locally (Binghamton, NY) as the “Lonesome and Lonely Traveller”. He described himself as a “singer of folk songs”, rather than as a “folk singer”, because his repertoire was not limited to the one genre. Eventually, my sister Leslie and I performed with him as the Green Family Singers for a time.

My back, my dad to the left, at my Grandma Williams’ funeral.

One insight into my father’s behavior involves cigarette smoking. For years, he smoked Winstons; he used to send my sister Leslie and me to O’Leary’s, the store at the corner, to buy them. When I was a teenager, he developed emphysema
and quit smoking. When the disease went away, he returned to smoking, to my transparent dismay. Then a few years later, he just stopped smoking. But he said that he didn’t quit; he preferred the notion that he just didn’t happen to have one for almost 30 years.

Did I ever tell you how my parents met? He delivered flowers as a teenager, and he was supposed to make a delivery to 13 Maple Avenue, but went instead to 13 Maple Street, on the opposite side of town. Apparently, my mother was smitten by this guy bringing flowers, even if they weren’t for her, and he was likewise taken by her.

When he made waffles, he made a big production about how to suss out their doneness. He told tall tales about cooking for George Washington and other historical figures. Whatever leftovers were in the fridge he could turn into a quite delicious concoction he called “gouly-goop”, undoubtedly a variation on the word goulash, though I don’t think I knew that at the time.

My father was very much involved in the civil rights movement in the area. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., there was violence in a lot of American cities, but not in Binghamton, in no small part because my father helped keep the peace.

Les Green was gregarious and personable, but not always at home, which is probably why I ended sending him a pair of letters. Still, I believe that it made things much better between us afterward.

My father always had a plan to get rich. Some of his ideas were workable. Did you know that Les Green was the first black registered auctioneer in the state of North Carolina? But he had, by my mother’s estimation, about 39 different businesses from the time he moved to North Carolina until the time he died in 2000, selling everything from prepaid phone cards to home alarm systems, many of them arguably pyramid schemes. All of his kids rolled their eyes when he signed all three of us – at $700 a pop! – to be distributors of one of his products, without our knowledge. He was lousy at keeping track of money.

He kept asking me – I’m smart, I work at a Small Business Development Center – to find him a way to get rich quickly via the Internet. I kept telling him that he ought to go to his local SBDC, so THEY could tell him the deficiencies of his more quixotic plans.

Probably the best time I ever had with my father, certainly, as an adult, was when I went to the ASBDC conference in Savannah, GA in the fall of 1998. He drove down from Charlotte, NC, and just hung out around town with me and three of my female colleagues, with whom he shamelessly flirted, as was his wont.

At Carol’s and my wedding reception, May 1999. Dad did the floral arrangements.

We have a small tribe, and his death made me the alpha male. Heck, with the exception of my niece’s husband, the ONLY male, and has been an interesting evolution in my life. My sisters often send me Father’s Day cards, which initially took me by surprise.

His death at the age of 73, now a decade ago, sometimes seems surreal. I’m STILL looking for an audiotape that my father made a few months before he died where he claimed that he was going to explain to the family what was going on with him, a dialogue with his doctor. I heard a snippet of it when I was down in Charlotte a month after he died, I set it aside, and then it disappeared.

I’m sure this was disjointed and rambling, but such was the relationship I had with my father. I should mention, though, that I love and miss my dad.

ABC Wednesday – Round 7