Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

Time, Time, Time...

Like deformed skeletons with lumps of oatmeal here and there across the bones, I have proto-drafts/outlines of posts sitting in my Drafts folder. Once I get any time in the evening to do anything with them, though, headaches and a draw towards sleep become the louder cry. Meanwhile, time's slipping away at an alarming rate. Getting a convention report up before the weekend would be nice, though, especially as it will be something that does double duty here and as part of my next Legends zine.

I did have to pause to quickly note something about today's date: It's my 21st wedding anniversary.

That's a detail to set my head whirling with a sort of chrono-vertigo.

I suppose I could use that to launch into a piece on the GOP attempt to shore up the Religious Right with the anti-gay marriage amendment push, knowing in the end I'd come back to the same point: As much as it strikes me as absurd that they're posing gay marriage as a threat to "real" marriage, the underlying problem is that government every got into the business of granting marriage licenses. A civil state should only be able to hand out civil licenses -- items couched in law -- while marriage is more a religious ceremony. That genie's centuries out of the bottle, though.

Gay couples should be able to have the same breadth and strength of universally-observed legal contract as straight couples, regardless of what they call it, and if it's granted by a civil authority then it should be called the same thing. I've been married for 21 years and we have two, teenage children. Our union was a civil affair, presided over by a hurried judge in the middle of a busy court day, and I don't believe that any of what we have is under fire by any committed gay couple wanting to have the same status.

Both my wife and I were raised Catholic, but we each dropped that well before we were married. Formally, in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, we're likely not strictly seen as being married, and I believe the religious right has to achieve the same level of comfort with these matters. Deep down in their hearts, as one moves from denomination to denomination and region to region, I'm sure that the application of a little sodium pentathol or whiskey and a conversation with someone they think of as one of their own would reveal that there are people who don't really consider interracial couples married in the eyes of their God, and/or have similar suspicions about any marriage between faiths or outside of a faith they approve of. That's fine. They're people, not government.

The attempts to play games with the idea that this is a slippery slope towards polygamy or bestiality are such that anyone who plays those cards should be shamed by their own words. A skeptically-raised eyebrown should be enough to reflect their words back on them, and in an extreme case dropping a reminder that the same things were said about interracial marriages. Desperate, straw-clutching notions that the intent to have children and raise a family are essential to marriage are insulting both to those who become married with no such intentions (for reasons ranging from recognizing their own emotional and/or financial unsuitability as parents, to responsibly choosing not to pass along congenital illnesses) and those who for various reasons created a family via adoption.

These days most of the ones who aren't immediately running for scriptural back-up are saying things along the lines of "radical social experiment" and attempting to put on the brakes in the name of protecting children from unforseen damage that might arise from having two mommies or two daddies. Ultimately, this means they've decided to defend the heterosexual norm, raising the idea (at least to me) that these people seem to be a little too alarmed about the issue. Like the preacher who used his clout to force 7-11s to put the porn mags out of sight because he couldn't control himself, it's difficult to not take at least some of this outcry as coming from people who are battling fiercely to keep their innate sexual preferences in the closet.

The closest thing to rational this is is that a heterosexual child growing up in a homosexual household will lack a role model reflecting his or her own natural orientation. Given the number of dysfunctional, abusive relationships in the world, though, can one really defend the notion that a heterosexual dad who beats his wife, chases skirts and is distanced from even his own emotions because he was raised to believe that was feminine/a sign of weakness is a better identifier than one in a committed relationship with another man? That some of these people literally think of it as battling personal demons - evil imps in the service of Hell - creeps me out far more than the thought of two human beings of the same gender making a lasting, loving, public committment to each other.

...and that's all I feel a need to say on that for now.

Falling in the middle of the week, and given Ari's condition (reasonably comfortable, but going anywhere is still a chore even with nearly ubiquitous wheelchair access), we're playing it by ear concerning tonight's plans. If we go out to dinner it'll be to someplace comfortable rather than expensive and dressy, so no reservations will be involved. Otherwise I'll make up another nice dinner - there's plenty of food there for me to work with. Or there'll be a decision for something good in the line of take-out. Either way, I don't plan on staying late at work today; by shortly aftre 5pm the lab should be dark and locked.

It's also my brother's 40th birthday, roughly marking the point at which the Norton Family as the Norton Family - my father, mother, two sisters and newly-born brother - made it's last change of location as a unit. We moved down from a short stretch in on-base housing up in Rhode Island in 1966, down to Levittown, PA. Roughly four years later my father would leave for the last time under circumstances I won't get into here. We've corresponded a little from the end of the 90's on, though that's fallen to nothing again over the past few years. Past a point there seemed too little to say.

My mother's still there -- or, rather, she will be again once she's done with the physical rehab -- and that wears on her. Over the fifteen years prior to moving there they'd lived in a variety of locales, from Panama (where my two sisters were born) to Florida to Paris to Rome (where I was born) before coming back to the states and bouncing from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island back to Pennsylvania. That in the end she found herself stuck in what she at least feels was the least of the places (I don't believe she counted Rhode Island, since that was on-base) has worn on her.

Mom's doing better, btw. I visited her Monday afternoon -- I needed to take the Voyager on a good highway run in order to reset a chip in the engine so it would tell the diagnostic computer that it was ready for emissions testing. This meant that while it had passed the mechanical inspection last week they weren't legally able to put the new inspection sticker on until the emissions (a separate test and a separate sticker) was run and on, so I got to make a 60+ mile trip in a van with stickers on it that ran out in March of '05. I had paperwork to show what was up, and that the ducks were all in a row, but suburban cops in at least this part of PA dearly love the easy revenue that comes from pulling over and ticketing people with out of date inspection stickers, so I wasn't sure I'd be free of trouble. It worked out fine, though, so now both vehicles are legal. Of course, the Windstar will be up for inspection next month and I know it at least needs some brake work, so we'll see...

Anyway, she's doing well and as soon as two weeks from now she could be out of there and into the next stage, recovering fully over at the home of the older of my sisters. The house is big - they'd done considerable expansion on it to accomodate seven children, all of whom are now out on their own - and Cindy's an RN. It'll be an almost ideal, comfortable home setting for mom to fully recover in before getting back home.

For now, though, a very busy day's ahead for me.