IGF CultureWatch

With Hallowe'en and the mid-term elections now behind us we are, it seems, hurtling headlong into the "Holiday Season." Already stores are offering Holiday sales, drug stores are selling Christmas tree lights and ornaments and, believe it or not, one Chicago radio station began playing Christmas music around the clock in the first week of November.

But it would be a shame if in all this flurry of activity the venerable holiday of Thanksgiving got lost. Thanksgiving is the only occasion during the year when each of us is encouraged to think about the things we are grateful for.

Originally the idea was to be thankful to a god people then believed in. But even in our more secular age we can still be aware that much of what makes our lives satisfying is not the result of our own efforts but the efforts of others, often people we do not even know--for example, the people who invented antibiotics or the founding fathers who created America's free political institutions.

But rather than telling you what you should be giving thanks for, it might be better if I share a few things I am thankful for in hopes that it will stimulate some ideas of your own. I am aware that a personal approach risks seeming sappy, but that is a necessary risk.

I suppose, first of all, I am thankful to be alive. It could easily have been otherwise. As a gay man who was sexually active during the late 1970s and early 1980s when, unknown to us all, HIV was spreading rapidly through our community, I could have been among those who contracted the virus and died early in the epidemic. Most of my friends from that era are dead.

So I am also thankful for the handful of friends I have left from that period as well as the ones I have managed to acquire since. They are the people who connect me to the world, entertain and inform me, offer help when needed and admonish me when I am wrong. More than most of us realize, we depend on friends to keep us sane and balanced.

As a single man and, it would seem, a confirmed bachelor, I am comfortable living without a partner. But for many people, having a partner can be a great blessing and certainly something to be thankful for. I can pass on the comment of one of my friends who observed one evening, "I am so lucky to have found a man I love and who loves me."

I am thankful that I am living at a time and in a country where a person can live openly with integrity as a gay person and lead a reasonably normal life. This opportunity is unique in recorded history and is still not possible in most of the world today. If we have not yet achieved full equality, we are closer than at any time in the past. Much of the freedom we have today is due to the courageous work of the pioneers of the gay movement and I am grateful to and thankful for them.

I am thankful for the two men from whom I have learned the most--Leo Strauss and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek and Strauss agree on almost nothing, so they exist in an unresolvable tension in my mind, a constant reminder that the world is more complicated than it seems, and serve as a stimulus to think carefully and write as clearly as possible. Two men whose erudition on homosexuality I am thankful for are psychologist C. A. Tripp and historian Wayne Dynes. Both shed light where there was darkness.

I am thankful for the proliferating variety and creativity of Western culture. Most of us will never absorb even half of it, but its music, art and literature have enriched my life and in many ways made my life worth living. A sampling of specifics: Literature--Conrad, Austen, Bely, Rand, Johnson, Swift; Music--Bach, Rachmaninoff, Vaughn Williams, Martinu, Gershwin; Art--Caravaggio, Caspar David Friedrich, De Chirico. My lists could be extended indefinitely, but then you have your own list.

Does it go without saying that I am thankful for my parents who did their best to guide and educate me? Perhaps it does not. When I have written appreciatively of my parents in the past, some people have commented to me that they did not have any such warm relationship with their parents. Reminders like that make me realize that supportive parents were not something I should take for granted but were the constant effort of two people trying hard to be good parents. For that I am thankful too.

After I wrote recently about the impediments--or lack of inducements--society presents for gay men to become adults, a reader referred me to an article on "Gay Adults" by Los Angeles psychologist Don Kilhefner in the magazine "White Crane."

Although the article contains too much Radical Faery politics and spirituality for my taste, Kilhefner's main point about the need for recognition of "gay adult" as a stage in the gay life-cycle is important and he develops it thoughtfully.

Kilhefner writes that one time after a public discussion about gay men's lives during which he discussed gay adulthood, "a bright, 30-something, gay man ... shared that he had never heard of the concept of a 'gay adult' ... and he found it intriguing. He always heard people talking about "older gays" and "younger gays" but he had never heard of gay men having an adult stage of development."

Maybe things are a little worse in the Hollywood fantasyland of perpetual youth, but perceptions are probably not much different elsewhere.

Kilhefner critiques the rationales (or excuses) offered--that I too have offered--for why gay men so often seem not to mature into adulthood.

Consider the supposed delayed adolescence of men who come out in their 20s. He points out that adolescence normally lasts about eight years at most. So, he wonders, "why am I seeing large numbers of gay men in their late 30's, 40's and 50's still thinking and acting like 20-somethings?"

He acknowledges that AIDS took the lives of many of the gay 30-65 generation, but cites CDC estimates that only 8-12 percent of gay men have died because of AIDS. "Where are the remaining 90% of gay men who are not missing in action?" he asks pointedly.

His critique of the "absence of children" argument is the weakest, depending on his notion that gays as a group have some purpose and that purpose is "the spiritual survival of the species." That sort of unprovable metaphysical speculation won't convince many people. But I think better arguments could be offered: Gay men who marry or otherwise join their lives to a long term partner generally act more mature. And even single men who see their own immature behavior mirrored in younger gay men eventually find the sight distasteful and abandon it.

I think there are counter-arguments to each of these, but they may be only partially successful so the critique of gay immaturity has considerable force and deserves a serious hearing.

There are actually gay adults around in considerable numbers. They run gay businesses, the gay cultural institutions, the gay bars and clubs, the community health and social service organizations. But perhaps they are inconspicuous to young people focused on the bar, party and hook-up scene.

Still, there are millions of gay adult besides those. And indeed, where are they? Perhaps they withdraw from the gay community because they view being gay as largely about drinking, drugs, and fast-food sex. That is a sad misunderstanding. More than anything, gay is about Civic Life. The gay community is an affinity group. It is about interpersonal empathy, friendships, social and political progress and cultural creativity.

For those who do not know how to stay involved: We need gay adults to volunteer at gay organizations, to serve on committees that can use their skills, to hold a fund-raising house party, or even start a new organization or group when the need arises, as all the AIDS organizations once were.

From time to time, I get emails from readers saying, "I wish there were a group that ..." to which I usually reply: "Start one!" Gay adults are the ones with the knowledge and self-confidence to be entrepreneurial about such things. (For instance, a young artist I know is currently forming a gay artists and art photographers network.)

And we need gay adults to engage in an unobtrusive calming and mentoring of young people (and juvenile adults) in the arts of growing up. They can do this in large measure just by being themselves. They can exemplify simple maturity and self-possession, an example of someone with a source of internal authority and sense of what is appropriate in varying circumstances.

"We have been busy mothering (i.e., accepting) each other and our young," Kilhefner writes, "accepting behaviors that are clearly self-destructive to us individually and collectively--at a time when we need to be fathering (i.e., communicating expectations to) ourselves and our young--developing a community-wide ethos ... that expects young gay men to become adults."

And I add: Sometimes it may take more overt social pressure. We have all seen people behave stupidly and thought to ourselves, "Oh, grow up!" Maybe we should occasionally say that out loud.

My friends Janna and Carrie are married to each other. So are Michelle and Heather, and Amy and Beth. They are married because they love each other and have committed to each other; they are married because they can be.

All three couples live in Massachusetts, which remains, after the New Jersey decision, the only state in the Union where it is legal for gays and lesbians to marry. They are just three of the more than 8,000 gay couples who have married in Massachusetts so far.

The New Jersey Supreme Court could have gone the Massachusetts route, mandating gay marriage. It did not. Instead, in a 4-3 split, the court said that equal rights are not optional. What to call those equal rights is.

The legislature, they said, has 180 days to decide. (All seven judges agreed unanimously that New Jersey's constitution protects the equal rights of gays and lesbians-the three judges in the minority voted for marriage instead of leaving it open to the legislature.)

This is a wise decision in our political climate. Coming so soon before the November mid-term elections, a ruling that ordered same-sex marriage in New Jersey would likely have propelled forward the anti-marriage amendments that will be on the ballot in eight states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Tennessee and South Carolina.

It could have been a disaster. We could have seen a backlash like the one that roiled the country after Massachusetts gave us marriage in 2003.

So yes, the decision was wise. Measured. It gave gays and lesbians in New Jersey access to the full rights they are entitled to, whatever that package of rights is called by legislators. I am thrilled-absolutely thrilled-that New Jersey is joining Connecticut and Vermont in giving all of its citizens the perks of marriage, including survivors benefits under workman's compensation laws, the ability to not testify at a spouse's criminal trial and tuition assistance.

But.

Equal-marriage activists are right when they say there is something special about the word "marriage."

It may seem like semantics. I myself thought that semantics was all it was, until I went up to Massachusetts a few weekends ago to play football and spend some time with Janna and Carrie, and Michelle and Heather (I need to see Amy and Beth on my next trip-sorry, guys).

I know many, many long-term lesbian couples in Chicago and New York. They own houses and condos, they have children and pets and car payments and gardens and holidays with the in-laws. They are as committed as my married friends.

I myself was in a partnership for seven years that both of us considered a marriage (this was before legal marriage was even a pipe dream). We had a ceremony; we received gifts. We presented ourselves to new acquaintances as till-death-did-we-part. Certainly, that was our intention, if not the eventual reality.

So I know that mere words-"marriage" or "civil unions" or "domestic partnership"-do not have the power to put a relationship together or take it apart.

But there's something special about the lesbian couples who are legally married, a striking difference between them and my partnered friends. There's an ease about them. A security. A relaxed sense of entitlement when dealing with officials, contractors, lawyers, employers. Marriage gives them personal and social standing that being partnered simply doesn't.

The words matter.

Not just to them. The words matter to their friends and neighbors and family members. Straight people understand about marriage. They understand what kind of commitment it is. They intuitively get the words wife, husband. They don't have to wonder after a year if the married couple is still together-they can assume they are, or else expect to commiserate over the news of divorce. They don't have to stumble over words, don't have to wonder if they say "girlfriend" or "significant other" or "partner" or what.

When faced with the words "married couple," straight people know how the couple should be treated, and they treat them accordingly. When they don't treat them accordingly, it is clear to everyone that they are discriminating.

Marriage is special. It just is. It is one of the marks of adulthood in our society, the term we use to describe the crucible that creates new families.

New Jersey isn't ready for marriage yet. Nor, obviously, is most of the country. If civil unions are what we can get right now, then civil unions are what we should continue to fight for, what we should agree to when compromise is necessary-as it inevitably is.

So it is civil unions for now. But let's not forget that we're aiming for what Janna and Carrie, Michelle and Heather, and Amy and Beth have already.

We want marriage.