IGF CultureWatch

This past weekend I attended a big Italian wedding in New York. I grew up on Long Island, in a family where big Italian weddings are a staple. This one had all the usual trappings: loud music, louder relatives, tons of food.

This one, however, had two grooms.

If you were just passing through the reception hall, you might not have noticed. The male-female ratio was a bit high, but not by much: most of the 140 guests were from the grooms' families. There was a "Nana" (Grandma) dressed in silver from head to toe: silver hair, silver dress, silver shoes. There were buxom aunts with too much makeup; uncles with big moustaches and perfectly slicked hair; excited mothers, proud fathers. Children ran about yanking at their bows and neckties, their Sunday clothes increasingly askew as the day progressed. A DJ kept prodding people to dance, and no one-not even the wait staff-batted an eye at the handful of same-sex couples swaying amidst the others.

At one point my partner leaned over to me and said, "This feels weird."

I knew what he meant. And it wasn't just the weirdness that accompanies all weddings: the gaudy pageantry; the forced intimacy with distant relatives and acquaintances; the cheesy running commentary from the DJ ("on this day, the most important day of their lives…"-ugh). It was the fact that, where we would normally be stealth attendees, we were suddenly the main event. This was not some newfangled "commitment ceremony"-it was a big, old-fashioned Italian wedding, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, godparents, and so on.

Most gays have a strange relationship with weddings. We are stereotypically (and often in fact) connected with their planning and execution, as florists, designers, musicians, priests, and so on. But as guests we are typically outsiders. We gather to celebrate love in a world that doesn't want to hear about ours. We sit at tables with relatives and friends who may not know that we're gay and may not like it if they do. We are warned not to "spoil things" by "making a scene." So when the slow songs play, we dance with Nana. Like the guys on "Queer Eye," we help plan others' events and then retreat invisibly into the background. I've always found it rather cruel.

But not here. And that was weird…in a good way.

One of the grooms has been a friend of mine for 24 years. Bob and I attended high school together: Chaminade, an all-male Catholic prep school on Long Island. In every class we shared I sat behind him, not because of any particular bond between us, but because we sat alphabetically and his last name begins with "Cors".

Lunch was the only time we could choose our seating partners, and there we sat together again, along with about a half-dozen other guys over the course of our four years there. At least five of those guys have turned out to be gay (another is a Catholic priest whose sexual orientation I've never bothered to ask). Go ahead and joke about "gaydar," but somehow we found kindred spirits years before any of us dared to admit-to ourselves or others-our sexual orientation.

Had you told me then that decades later I would be attending the gay wedding of one of my lunch buddies, I would have prayed for you (I was very Catholic then; skepticism set in later). Had you added that I would be attending with my own male partner, I would have…well, I would have prayed for me. By then I was aware enough of my burgeoning gayness to fear it.

So it was particularly sweet for me, in the same week I received the invitation to our twenty-year high school reunion, to stand up with Bob's family and friends and witness his wedding to Joe. It felt good to say "Congratulations" to his Mom and Dad in the receiving line-the same Mom and Dad who posed for graduation pictures with us two decades earlier. It was delightful (though a sobering reminder of my age) to meet his younger sister's children, some of whom will soon be thinking about high school themselves.

Political battles are important and necessary. But the fight for marriage equality will ultimately be won only when our nanas and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews see our marriages as the family-extending events that they are. Congratulations, Joe, Bob, and family.

Rep. Christopher Shays has an odd reason for supporting a proposal designed to eliminate employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

"I want a gentler world," the Connecticut Republican told The Associated Press in a recent interview about the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007. "I want a world where people are nicer to each other and more respectful. I want a more moral world and this legislation meets all those needs."

Shays is a co-sponsor of the bill, along with Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio.

This was a curious statement, even for a moderate Republican like Shays. The essence of traditional conservatism, at least philosophically, acknowledges the world as it is, not the way supposedly starry-eyed liberals would like it to be.

Attempting to change people's deep-seated beliefs through the act of the legislative pen seems like something that Republicans make fun of Democrats for doing.

This is not to say that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is unworthy of bipartisan support. The bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the modern-day civil rights agenda. It would make it illegal for employers to determine hiring, firing, promotion or salary decisions on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Discriminating upon the basis of race, gender, national origin, age or disability has long been illegal, and if one accepts that homosexuality is as intrinsic a factor in someone's personhood as these other traits, and agrees that private employers ought not be allowed to discriminate based upon innate characteristics, then the bill should merit support.

Religious institutions and the military (which actively discriminates against open homosexuals already and is permitted to do so under the auspices of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy) would be exempt from the law.

It is currently legal to fire someone because of sexual orientation in 33 states, which the passage of a federal anti-discrimination bill like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would end.

This injustice of not being able to get a job or being fired simply for what one does in the bedroom, or because of one's gender identity, is as pressing for gay-rights advocates as the denial of marriage rights. Unfortunately, there is little credible statistical evidence of such discrimination, but gay-rights advocates are convinced the abundant anecdotal illustrations support their case for passage.

But at the end of the day, there is only so little that government action can do to make people "more moral," in spite of Shays' sanguine forecast. Understanding the confines of government power over the consciences of individuals is something that those on both the left and right would do well to appreciate. Anti-sodomy laws, overturned in 2003, did nothing to stop people from engaging in certain sex acts that some Americans view as immoral.

The prohibition of alcohol - which was mandated by constitutional fiat - did not stop people from drinking booze. Likewise, penalizing private employers for discriminating against homosexuals will not suddenly convert them into full-fledged supporters of gay equality.

There is an important distinction, however, between what people believe and how they act. Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865, but any student of American history knows that active, government discrimination against blacks hardly ended with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution.

It was not until nearly 100 years later, with passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that blacks-at least in law-were accorded full equality with other citizens. Prior to the passage of this bill, the federal government was repeatedly required, sometimes by physical might, to enforce equal treatment under the law.

It would be nice if we lived in a world where people did not discriminate against those of a different color, gender identity or sexual orientation. Perhaps if people just stopped and listened to the sternly worded resolutions that the United Nations issues every day, then maybe the genocide in Darfur would cease, Robert Mugabe would stop oppressing his starving people, and Muslim countries would mandate that women not be treated as property.

Would all this be so. But mere legislation won't make bigotry go away.

Opponents of gay marriage have tried a number of arguments, all of which have failed to end the progress toward the recognition of gay relationships. Now they're trying out a new one that ties gay marriage to a miasma of marital and familial decline.

Gay-marriage opponents first argued that same-sex couples could not be married because the definition of marriage is the union of a man and a woman. This worked as long as nobody thought very hard about the issue, but it fails as soon as you realize the whole argument is over what the definition should include.

Some gay-marriage opponents tried to frighten the public with negative stereotypes of gays. The problem is that too many Americans know actual gay people for this to have much effect anymore.

Next they warned that gay marriage would be the first step down a slippery slope toward things like polygamy. But this failed to catch on because there just aren't that many people clamoring for ten-person marriages. Two is hard enough.

They moved on to children after that, warning that gay couples couldn't do as good a job as a biological mother and father. This argument still has some life, but its power wanes when people realize that gay marriage won't take children away from biological parents who want to raise them. And marriage would help the more than one million children now being raised by gay people.

Now, in a new book entitled The Future of Marriage, family and marriage scholar David Blankenhorn tries a new argument. He argues that support for gay marriage is part of a destructive "cluster" of "mutually reinforcing" beliefs about family life. He cites international surveys of attitudes about families and marriage showing that the presence of gay marriage in a country correlates with a series of beliefs that he describes as, roughly speaking, anti-marriage.

For example, people in countries with gay marriage are more likely to agree with statements like, "One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together," or, "It is alright for a couple to live together without intending to get married."

Conversely, people in countries with no recognition of gay relationships are more likely to agree with statements like, "Married people are generally happier than unmarried people," or, "The main purpose of marriage these days is to have children."

In other words, Blankenhorn notes that there is a correlation between non-traditional beliefs about marriage and support for gay marriage. He claims this allows us to "infer" a "likely causal relation" between gay marriage and anti-marriage views.

What do we make of this latest anti-gay marriage argument? A correlation might indicate something important is going on. It's a clue that two seemingly unrelated phenomena may be related.

But by itself a correlation doesn't prove that one thing caused another. People who buy ashtrays are more likely to get lung cancer -- but this doesn't prove that buying ashtrays causes lung cancer. If we relied on correlation alone, we'd think all sorts of crazy things were causally related.

Consider what can be done with a correlation used to "infer" a "likely causal relation." People in countries without same-sex marriage are more likely to believe women should stay at home and not work, that men should be masters of their households, that there should be no separation of church and state, that people should not use contraception when they have sex, and that divorce should never be permitted. If these correlations exist, have I demonstrated the existence of a "cluster of beliefs" that reinforce one another, undermining the argument against gay marriage?

Or consider the more sympathetic correlations to gay marriage that Blankenhorn ignores. Countries with SSM are richer, healthier, more democratic, more educated, and more respectful of individual rights. Have I shown that the absence of gay marriage is likely causing harm in those benighted countries that refuse to recognize it?

Here's another correlation helpful to the case for gay marriage: countries with gay marriage are enjoying higher marriage rates since they recognized it. Have I shown that gay marriage likely caused this?

Even Blankenhorn's correlation is suspect. Non-traditional attitudes about marriage preceded the recognition of gay marriage in the countries that have it. How could gay marriage have caused a decline in traditional marital attitudes before it even existed?

Of course, Blankenhorn is still free to argue that non-traditional attitudes greased the way for gay marriage, but this doesn't show that it caused or even reinforced non-traditional attitudes. What Blankenhorn needs, even as a starting point, is some evidence that non-traditionalist views increased after gay marriage began. He doesn't have that. Even if he did, such a rise might well only be a continuation of pre-existing trends.

And even if he had the sequence right, Blankenhorn would still have the problem of trying to deal with the existence of multiple other factors that have plausibly fueled non-traditionalist attitudes. We can plausibly surmise that things like increased income, longer life spans, more education, and women's equality - rather than gay marriage - have led to non-traditionalist attitudes about marriage.

Intellectual guilt-by-association has an easy appeal that may make Blankenhorn's argument an anti-gay marriage mantra in the future. His superficially frightening correlations have to be carefully unpacked to show how misleading they are.

Old Age too creeps up on little cat feet. It happens while you are busy doing something else, usually something far more interesting. And it happens so gradually that you don't realize it is happening to you. Which is fine because it really isn't a big deal.

When we were young we all expected being old to feel very different from being young, but it doesn't, at least not enough to be a qualitative change. More often, getting older is something that you notice in other people, not in yourself.

But once in a while you get clues from the way other people behave toward you. More people call you "Sir" or "Mister." Nobody calls you "Dude" or "Guy." Once I was called "Grandpa." A few weeks ago I was carrying some groceries onto a bus and a young woman offered me her seat. Sales clerks seem more willing to offer assistance, I suppose thinking I am more likely to need it. A casual acquaintance at a bar recently asked how old I was and let out a little gasp when I told him, as if to say, "What? And not dead yet?"

Another clue is that most of your old college professors, all the major modern thinkers you learned from, most of the modern authors whose books you enjoyed are now dead--even the long-lived ones. Just to take a few recent examples, Milton Friedman, Kurt Vonnegut, Barbara Gittings. Many others died further back--in the 1970s and 1980s. You get the disconcerting feeling that it all depends on your generation now. I sure hope the others are doing their part because I can't do it alone.

You become vaguely aware that time grows shorter, that there are a lot of things you've been meaning to do "someday" and that if you don't do them pretty soon you won't get them done ever. As of my birthday a few days ago, the actuarial tables give me several more years, which isn't so bad, really. You can do a lot in several years.

But the point is that somewhere along in the aging process you begin to take seriously the idea that life has a terminus and that--surprisingly--this actually applies to you too. This is nothing as big and gloomy as the Existentialists' "sense of one's own mortality," just a kind of "Oh, if not now (or soon), then never."

So you have to begin a kind of triage among your various goals, casting aside the less important and never-very-heartfelt ones (e.g., reading Proust), and resolve at least to begin working on the others. In the last few years, for instance, I've been spending some of my free time learning more about art to make up for a deficiency in my education. It turned out to be enjoyable as well as interesting.

For the same reason, I've started occasionally reading some books generally regarded as a "classic," many of which turned out to be pretty good. Other people will have different goals: travel to a foreign country they have never seen, taking up a hobby or craft, getting involved in local politics. Whatever it is, it is time to do it.

One of the most common beliefs about growing older is that aging is accompanied by a decline in energy level. No doubt that is true. But the decline is so gradual that you hardly notice it and scarcely feel the loss as it is occurring. Don't worry about it. Just accept it as part of the gift of a long life. A lot of gay men never got that gift.

One of the great benefits of growing older is the natural ability to act mature. Most of us who are older have, I think, developed a kind of reserve and restraint, a degree of emotional stability, a bemused attitude toward life, a greater degree of empathy in our relationships, and a broader perspective. Those are gains not to be disguised or abandoned.

Once in a while you see some older gay man acting as if he were in his 20s, as if he thinks that is a great age to be. It doesn't work. In fact, it only highlights how old he really is by drawing attention to his failure to be what he is trying for. People, including the young, will respect you more for being a good example of whatever age you really are.

And frankly, young gays need older gay people as exemplars of how they themselves can grow up rather than remaining, for lack of visible alternatives, in the state of perpetual adolescence we sometimes see in younger gays at the bars. Our "culture," such as it is, must get over the excessive focus on youth and youthfulness. Even if it is only a stereotype, it is one that we help perpetuate by not challenging it directly.