By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Feb 12, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
We all have our own irrational fears, based on an emotional response rather than facts. Kids are afraid of monsters in the closet, phobics are afraid of spiders or the color red, single men are afraid of commitment, I’m afraid of cheerleaders – none of these things actually pose a threat, and we eventually either grow up, learn to move past our fears, or in the case of my husband, realize that being married is way more fun than he’d thought.
So with the Supreme Court preparing to hear cases related to gay marriage, it’s time to apply that same standard of rationality to the objections raised by opponents. Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2004 (as well as in many progressive states and countries, and frankly, we in California should be ashamed of ourselves for being less progressive than Iowa and Canada!). Therefore, instead of vague fears, we can look at the actual effects on society in those locations – and guess what, absolutely nothing bad has happened. The predictions of societal catastrophe, public fornication, gender confusion, and children behaving terribly have not come true – in fact, the divorce rate has declined in Mass, and experts predict we’ll see the same effect in other states once more data is in. So one could argue that gay marriage is GOOD for society as a whole, not just for all those committed couples who are denied the legal protections we take for granted. (Note – the way I convinced my previously commitment-phobic husband that we needed ‘just a piece of paper’ was to point out that our gay friends have to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to get a fraction of the protection we could get for $50 and a quick trip to City Hall.) (Although now I let him think the whole thing was his idea!)
There are so many real things in this world of which to be afraid – financial collapse, global warming, more Kardashian reality shows – so I believe it’s time for opponents of gay marriage to recognize that there is nothing to fear, and to go find something that actually justifies worrying. And to help them along, here’s a song examining the evidence.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Feb 12, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
“The only way you could meet my crazy was by doing something crazy yourself.” –Bradley Cooper as Pat in Silver Linings Playbook
We all bring our crazy to a relationship. Silver Linings does a beautiful job of writing a relationship where both participants are crazy but they take turns. They meet each other where they’re at. They end sentences with a preposition. They scream and throw dishes in public. They hug people whom they have a restraining order against or from. They end sentences with a preposition again. Did I mention that people call me crazy? They think I’m dreaming my life away, just like John Lennon wrote.
I struggle with how to let people into my life without letting them take over. How to embrace my crazy without getting caught up in it. How to recognize someone else’s crazy when they’re telling you it’s you. And when it’s also you. So complicated.
Spoiler alert- I’m going to talk about Silver Linings some more- I just loved it so much. It is rare for a romantic comedy (nay, romantic comedy/drama) to get it right without being trite. One of my favorite scenes was at the diner. Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) opens up about herself and seems to be having a moment with Pat. She offers to help her out and then he insults her by not wanting to be associated with her in the context of his ex-wife.
Rather than crying and running out of the restaurant (at first, at least), which I would have done, she balks. That’s the best word for her face. She looks at him, condescendingly, and says; “You actually think I’m crazier than you.” Not in the form of a question, but as a statement of disbelief. It’s great. I admire that. I wish that in the midst of a heated argument I could have the composure to do that. It was awesome. And then she smashes all the dishes off the table in one fell swoop and runs out of the restaurant, crying. I kind of wish I could do that too. The dishes part. The crying part I’m good at.
The beauty of it is that Pat realizes in that moment that he’s crossed a line and then he comes to the rescue on her crazy. They go back and forth on this as their relationship blooms. And that gives new meaning to the phrase the “dance of intimacy.”
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: People Think I’m Crazy
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Feb 11, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The difference between guys and dogs.
When a dog catches a car it pauses and looks genuinely confused….and saunters off knowing he miscalculated the payoff and feeling foolish (even by dog standards).
When a guy catches the equivalent of a car he has been chasing (so to speak), he seems uncertain for a nanosecond and then immediately projects the image of someone positively thrilled with his capture, of knowing exactly what he was doing and what to expect, and poses as if to say, “Seriously folks, have you ever seen such brilliantly successful car chasing before ? I didn’t think so.”
And then before any sliver of doubt emerges begins looking for the next car to chase (figuratively speaking) –as his audience watches on approvingly.
Other than this distinction guys and dogs are otherwise very similar.
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 at 2:15 PM ET
A great column by Chuck Culpepper at Sports on Earth, “The Gay Super Bowl” (h/t Joe Sonka)
Eight days before the gayest Super Bowl week on record, I walked toward the Baltimore Ravens’ locker room in New England consumed entirely with thoughts of football, pure football, undiluted football.
I am that exotic creature, a gay male sportswriter, but on this frigid walk I was thinking only of Baltimore’s rout of the Patriots and how it had sustained my sense of the Ravens’ uncommon camaraderie. Hoping to learn more about a cohesion I had admired for five years, I joined the reporter scrum at linebacker Terrell Suggs’ locker, known to be a harbor of humor and insight.
Oh.
Oh . . .
There stood Brendon Ayanbadejo, age 36, born in Chicago to an American mother and Nigerian father, educated at UCLA, three Pro Bowls as a noble special-teams sort, a man whom I had never met but for whom I held a vast gratitude. In a giddy locker room in which the great Ed Reed waltzed around singing Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise,” I momentarily had misplaced Ayanbadejo’s face. In fact, in the urgency of the game, I had not thought of him all weekend. Yet here was a man I had never expected to exist in all my life, a heterosexual football powerhouse who had spoken up voluntarily and beautifully and repeatedly for g-g-g-gay people.
Now a storm coursed through my head. Should I make this personal? Should I thank Mr. Ayanbadejo right then and there, just after Suggs had finished teasing a famous NFL reporter for an inaccurate game prediction? Or should I stick with my customary etiquette and proceed with the football questions?
In my offbeat life, I have clomped my klutzy size-13 shoes in two worlds you might call disparately disparate. On six continents I have hung around excellent gay people who find sports an unappealing mystery and look flabbergasted at my interest. I have hung around excellent sportswriters who would never stray near a gay bar unless they wandered too far down Bourbon Street at a Final Four. The gay people seldom ask about the sports people, and the sports people seldom ask about the gay people.
I am believed to be the only gay male extant who can recite the final scores of all 47 Super Bowls, and if we’re together and you’re unlucky, I might start it up.
So I have endured all the stages of my plight: the long dislike-myself stage, the longer please-tolerate-me stage, the still-longer I-might-be-OK stage and even the world-is-absurd stage, which arrived one day in a tiny flat in London when I read on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that a museum in Oslo would be exhibiting the 1,500 species in which homosexuality had been observed or studied.
Fifteen hundred! You mean I’m part of some natural continuum, and I’ve spent chunks of my life fretting myself silly over this?
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
A quite moving speech from Mike Freer, a conservative, Tory Member of Parliament in favor of marriage equality in Great Britain. The bill passed in a rout, 400-175.
To all of my friends, liberal and conservative and everyone in between. Jump on in — the water is quite warm.
Being from the San Francisco area, I was one of many locals horrified by Chris Culliver’s homophobic remarks last week (about how he’d never play with a gay team-mate – “We dont got no gay people on the team. You know, they gotta get up out of here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff”) And being the daughter of a former English teacher, I was one of many writers almost as equally horrified by his mangling of the language.
But the reaction he prompted was incredibly reassuring. Of course the 49ers organization condemned his remarks – they know their market! – but plenty of other NFL players chimed in, offering their support for gay rights and marriage equality. Seemingly overnight, becauase of one fairly idiotic remark, the homophobia that has long been ingrained in sports culture seems to be dissolving.
Frankly, I never understood sports homophobia – events involving large numbers of incredibly buff young men running around a court or field, jumping, chasing, and tackling each other, is about as homo-erotic as anything not x-rated. And while I don’t expect most teams to dump end-zone prayers for group performances of YMCA, it sure does seem like the overall climate has changed. Sure, a few neanderthals are sputtering about the horrors (“what’s next, people marrying their horses?”), but it’s hard to dispute the fact that public opinion is shifting. Who knows whether it’s because of Will & Grace, or because Idaho and New England haven’t suddenly gone beserk (no pet marriages yet!), but I for one am thrilled. (I am a card-carrying Jewish mother, so naturally I’m still hoping that one of my sons turns out gay, so he’ll never replace me with another woman and I’ll have a shopping pal.)
So here’s a new ‘fight song,’ in honor of the welcome changes within the sports community:
Today’s post is courtesy of the queen of romantic planning, Sarah Pease, The Proposal Planner (TM). Whether she’s taking over the flight deck of the Intrepid for an epic proposal, or organizing the perfect picnic in Central Park, Sarah knows what’s what when it comes to making romance happen.
For some, Valentine’s Day is the most romantic day of the year filled with love, red roses and candlelit dinners. For others, it’s a commercialized, manufactured holiday rife with cheesy teddy bears, silk boxer shorts and exorbitantly priced prix fixe menus. Regardless of your opinion, it’s a great excuse for organizing a fun date with your loved one (even if it’s just your most-loved friend!). Here are five of my favorite ideas for Valentine’s Day:
1) For the Wallet-Conscious: Create your own wine tasting. With a little research done online or with your local wine shop, select 2 reds and 2 whites and pair them with cheeses or chocolates. Using a scarf from your closet, conduct an official blind tasting by candlelight. Not only will you expand your knowledge of wines, but you’ll also enjoy the flirty part of blindfolding each other! Budget not an issue? Hire a sommelier to do a private tasting!
2) Starry Night: Research the hours at your local planetarium or night-sky observatory and arrange to have a private tour. Whether you’re strapped into an IMAX seat watching the latest space-themed movie, or gazing at real stars in other galaxies, you’ll be in a romantic mood under all those stars.
3) Love is all Around: Plan an entire evening around love. Meet your sweetheart at the Museum of Sex near the Flatiron Building – who says a museum can’t be fun? Once you’ve explored all the newest exhibits, head to your favorite cocktail bar to sip on the cocktails she loves. From there, treat her to her guilty-pleasure food – is it cheesy biscuits from Red Lobster? Coconut Invasion cake from Asia de Cuba? Tonight is the night to indulge. End the evening by sharing three reasons why you love each other.
4) Futuristic Love: Want to know what the universe has in store for you? Do a psychic reading together! Make an appointment or stop in to see what the crystal ball or tarot cards say. If you really want to tempt fate, try a few different fortune tellers to see if their predictions overlap.
5) Ice Skating and Hot Chocolate: Strap on your skates and join the crowds for a lively spin around the ice rink. If you’re in New York, you can blend in with the tourists in Central Park, Rockefeller Center or Bryant Park, or discover some of the smaller rinks around the city. Reward all of your activity with a cab ride to City Bakery and test out the “drinkable chocolate” of the day. Got a sweet tooth? Plan to come back every other day for the rest of their Hot Chocolate Festival which runs the entire month of February. That way you can try a new flavor every night.
Many thanks to Sarah for sharing her fantastic ideas. For more info on Sarah, check out her website.
And now that you’ve got the best date ever planned, read here for what to wear.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jan 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Love is…
When your spouse knows you have a number of quirky habits and addictions, and doesn’t comment critically when she realizes you are frittering away time with one of the more harmless ones–because she knows it could be worse.
And even says something encouraging.
Like when a patient at a mental hospital finishes making a wallet and shows it off with pride and receives praise from the hospital staffer on duty.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jan 29, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
I know there’s a lot going on politically right now, between immigration reform, deficit ceiling craziness, and gun control, and it may seem hard to find much in the world that is even remotely bipartisan.
But certain human experiences connect us all – as I was reminded by watching the way Sybil’s childbirth death on Downton Abbey affected both the privileged gentry and the hard-working servants downstairs. Birth, marriage, death, putting on our trousers one leg at a time – it helps me to remember that even those with whom I vehemently disagree still love their families or enjoy good dark chocolate. And on the same day Downton Abbey aired that episode, I had my own version of one of those experirences-which-unite-us-all . . . my younger son took possession of his first car (an ancient one he got from my ex, his dad, with 300,000 miles on it, but it runs!)
Suddenly after two decades of my life revolving around my kids and their various activities, doctors, etc., I’m mostly done with driving them, and that’s something we can all relate to! (or as they would say at Downton, “something to which we all can relate . . . “)
“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.””
-Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream”. August 28, 1963
I remember every Martin Luther King, Jr holiday, our teachers in elementary school would have us watch Dr. King’s famous speech from 1963. His voice echoing for equality was beyond an young child’s understanding, but his emotion was transcendent.
As I have grown up, the memory of watching Dr. King echoes through my mind every Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. For this holiday, the words of “I Have a Dream” became even more poignant for me. This year, the holiday to honor Dr. King coincided with the Presidential Inauguration of an African-American President and I was fortunate enough to bear witness.
The crowd in Washington, DC in 2013 must have mirrored the crowd on the National Mall in 1963. The crowd represented individuals of all ages, all races, all religions, all creeds from all states regardless of distance. It did not matter who they were, or if they knew each other before the event, the viewing of the inauguration was like a reunion between old friends. We joked about the trees blocking our view, we cheered with our first peek of Michelle Obama, and we shared stories about what this moment meant to us.
The most moving part of the crowd for me was seeing the older African Americans. They had braved the cold, braved the crowd, and braved their health to be witness to history. As I watched the excitement on their faces, I wondered how many of them were able to witness Dr. King’s speech fifty years ago, not as a videotape as I remembered, but as a live event. The emotion of this moment for them was given away by their voices when they cheered, “Amen” during Myrlie-Evers Williams’s invocation. In fifty years, they had come so far from the injustices of segregation to having an African-American President sworn into a second term.
The t-shirt vendors off the National Mall and streets of DC got it right. Their shirts had a picture of Dr. King and President Obama, with the caption, “Dream Fulfilled”. What a profound inaugural day. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream indeed.
I remember every Martin Luther King, Jr holiday, our teachers in elementary school would have us watch Dr. King’s famous speech from 1963. His voice echoing for equality was beyond an young child’s understanding, but his emotion was transcendent.
