'the future of marriage' live-blog: determining marriage's fate & the appendix

Welcome to part seven of my live-blog reading of David Blankenhorn's The Future of Marriage (2007). You can read part one, part two, part three, part four, part five and part six here. 

After reviewing David B.'s "goods in conflict" defense of heteros-only marriage, I've rather abruptly found myself done with The Future of Marriage. It's hard to feel like bothering with the final chapter ("Determining Marriage's Fate") or the odd appendix ("Topics in the Anthropology of Kinship"). I mean, it's pretty clear at this point that Blankenhorn's historicized understanding of marriage, his beliefs about what "goods" it brings into the world, and what (lesser) "goods" queer equality might bring, and ultimately his erasure of queerly-inclined children (and children raised by queer parents), all do me in.

Still, to be complete, here are a few scattered thoughts about the final sections of The Future of Marriage.

Chapter 8: Determining Marriage's Fate

This is a chapter with a lot of tables, a lot of data. David B. is making the case for the institution of (a certain type of) marriage as a social and personal good, so he combs through social science data from around the world, attempting to argue that nations with a strong marriage culture do better in a variety of other measures.

The problem, in my mind, is that the numbers don't really make his case for him. In fact, they often seem to undercut the marriage-is-under-threat narrative he's attempting to build. The percent of children in the United States in 2000 living with two married parents, for example, is 68.1% -- down from 85.2% in 1970. That's a jump, certainly, but sixty-eight percent still means that over two-thirds of children in the U.S. live in the care of a married couple. 59.7% of children were living with "their own married parents," by which he presumably means the bio-parents of the child(ren) in question. That means that an overwhelming majority of children living with married parents are living with their own bio-parents (fewer than 10% live in "marriage" households formed through divorce and remarriage, adoption or other means).

Is the glass half full or half empty? I guess it's all you read the numbers.

And that's if you buy David B.'s assumptions about married-bio-parent households being a presumed "best state" situation for children to be raised within the bounds of. Which I've already pointed out is a far from inevitable conclusion to draw from the available evidence.

My point is this: The United States IS ALREADY a profoundly "marriage culture" nation. We privilege people who obtain "married" status in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The fact that the "health" of (a certain type of) marriage culture in the U.S. has dropped, according to Blankenhorn's composite Index of Marriage's Institutional Vitality, from 77.6% in 1970 to 62.5% in 2000 seems both extremely understandable, given the cultural upheavals of the last forty years, and not a serious cause for alarm. I would argue what we're seeing in those numbers is the slipping away of hegemony. The return, in fact, from a unique period of (quasi-imposed, quasi-falsified) cultural uniformity in the postwar era, to a state of affairs much more familiar within American history: contested cultural norms and values. In 1970, as America exited the 1960s, the numbers Blankenhorn cites -- marriage rates, intact first marriages, married parenthood, etc. -- would still reflect the anomalous period in which the Depression and WWII generations (who'd delayed marriage) and the immediate postwar generation (who hurried it) created the baby boom and the precipitous drop in the average age of marriage for both women and men.

Toward the end of this chapter, we return to the ladyscholar hating as David B. returns to the work of historian Stephanie Coontz whom he has taken a real dislike to. "Stephanie Coontz," he asserts, "has made a career out of arguing that her own philosophical preferences and the laws of historical inevitability are one in the same" (236). She "consults history and announces that anyone" who thinks families were once stronger than they are now "suffers from a mental disability called 'nostalgia' " (236). I've not read The Way We Never Were, Coontz's seminal social history of 1950s nostalgia, but I'd be extremely surprised if she characterized nostalgia as a "mental disability." But Blankenhorn is determined to remind us that Coontz is an "activist" (the horror!) and, in fact, is allied with that other evil ladyscholar Judith Stacey, with whom she founded the Council on Contemporary Families, "a group largely devoted to defending the upswing in divorce and unwed childbearing," as David puts it.

Such a characterization might surprise the CCF, which articulates their mission as one "to provid[e] the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families," listing ageing, children and parenting, economic issues, gender and sexuality, health and illness, marriage, partnership and divorce, singles, and work-family issues as all residing under their umbrella of scholarly and political interests. Their mission appears to be responsive rather than prescriptive, reading in part: "the Council's mission is to enhance the national understanding of how and why contemporary families are changing, what needs and challenges they face, and how these needs can best be met."

It appears to me that David Blankenhorn has confused "enhancing the national understanding of how and why" with "defending," and identifying "what needs and challenges" families face and "how these needs can best be met" with blind advocacy.

I think, in the end, we are perhaps running up against a vast gulf in values when it comes to the political and social use of shame and judgement. David B. is upset because those of us at the Coontz-Stacey end of the spectrum see family diversity as both inevitable and neutral. We ask "what do these families, of all shapes, need to thrive -- and how to we facilitate them meeting those needs?" David B., on the other hand, presume to know what families need (240-241):

1. A higher success rate for first marriages
2. A lower rate of childbirth outside of marriage ("unwed childbearing")
3. No "legal redefinition" of marriage
4. Public scrutiny and regulation of the fertility industry [a point I actually agree with him on]
5. A national conversation about "what marriage is." (Hint: NOT a "private relationship between two individuals")

Marriage's "fate" is in our hands ... and it's clear David B. thinks we're doing bad, bad things to it.

Shame on us.

Appendix: Topics in the Anthropology of Kinship

I'm not exactly sure what this appendix is doing in the book, other than giving David B. a place to dump all of the random stuff he wants to say about non-dyadic, non-monogamous Christian model marriages but couldn't get into the main text of the book. He reserves particular distaste for polygyny, polyandry, and polyamory which I want to highlight here for its bisexual stereotyping (yup, you read that arightly).

Polyamory is apparently "what's new" and "hot" for the same-sex marriage crowd these days -- those poly folk, so trendy! "Polyamory is tomorrow's big new idea, being worked out today by creative theorists in academic conferences, advanced support groups, and little journals" (256).

*fans away the fumes of anti-academic disdain*

First of all, the historian in me has to point out that poly is not "tomorrow's big new idea," unless it's a new idea that's been percolating for at least a hundred and fifty years. Because the folks at Oneida were all over the group marriage thing, no "particular attachments," blah blah blah. This may be a marginal or minority practice, but it is not some latter-day fad invented by a bunch of post-structuralists in a smokey back room.

Also: advanced support groups? little journals? Say what?

But that's David just getting started. Because it's not the academics who are arguing so radically that "the state 'should have no right to privilege or impose one form of family structure or sexuality over another' " (gasp! *clutches pearls*) -- it's us horny bisexuals as well (256-257):

After all, if same-sex marriage becomes normative, on what moral basis could a fair-minded person possibly oppress bisexual polyamorous marriage? Particularly when bisexual persons will be making exactly the same claim as homosexual persons about the need for marriage as a legal institution to accommodate and respect sexual orientation?" (259).

First of all, let me point out that all of these things David B. brings up with such appalled hand-wringing? He's nothing if not accurate in the sense that I do believe that "marriage as a legal institution [should] accommodate and respect" human sexual variety and diverse family forms. So the whole academic bisexuals will ruin marriage in groups! thing fails to excite me to moral outrage.

But I also want to tease apart the conflation he's created here between poly folks and bisexual folks.

Yes, polyamorous people may be bisexual. They may form mixed-sex relationships in which some people are bisexual and some are monosexual or otherwise-sexual. Yes, bisexual people may be polyamorous. But being a bisexual person, in the sense that you have the capacity to be sexually desiring of people of your own sex and people of other (not-your-own) sexes, is not the same as desiring or forming a polyamorous relationship.

Being a person in a polyamorous relationship is not the same as being bisexual.

So while I support creating a flexible cultural and legal understanding of marriage that can accommodate -- dare I say celebrate! -- more-than-two relationships as well as two-person partnerships, that stance on marriage has no direct connection to my sexual orientation as bisexual. Bisexual people, just like monosexual people, experience a wide range of desires and exhibit a wide range of partnership behaviors. We don't require multiple partners due to our bisexual capacity for desire, anymore than a straight man requires more than one straight woman to satisfy his attraction to both blondes and brunettes, or short as well as tall women, busty and flat-chested. We fall in love with particular people, all of us, and our capacity to love and sexually desire others is only as material to our individual commitments as we want or allow it to be.

So there you have it folks. The Future of Marriage.

I have to say, I hope that future is as expansive as David B. fears it will be.

Next week, I'm going to round out this series with some notes on the treatment of male vs. female proponents of same-sex marriage. Stay tuned!

adventures in "allergy-free" eating

For the past month, Hanna's been following a diagnostic diet prescribed by her nutritionist in hopes that they'll be able to identify, without more intrusive testing, the source of some persistent symptoms she's been having. We suspect gluten, but the diet starts with no assumptions. So we've had to temporarily eliminate lactose and legumes and soy as well as certain fruits and vegetables (and we're already functionally vegetarians, so no meat, poultry, or fish per usual). Worst of all is avoiding chocolate (!). But we've been making do -- and even making some fun alternate food discoveries.

A few observations.

• Of the non-dairy "cheese" options available, we've enjoyed the almond-based ones over tapioca or rice.
• Who knew there were so many awesome non-wheat flours? Even if you're not required by dietary restrictions to use them, you should definitely try spelt, rice, oat, and quinoa flours. Oat flour is particularly tasty for cookies, and quinoa flour gives baked goods a delicious nutty flavor (I've 
• Coconut-based ice cream is very tasty, regardless of whether you need to avoid lactose. Particularly when you live a five-minute bike ride away from FoMu.
• Likewise, coconut milk makes delicious home-made custard.
• Omelets make good substantive meals morning, noon, and night! (Even if they turn into egg scramble because you fumble the flipping).
• Pancakes, particularly Joy the Baker's cornmeal-molasses cakes, can be easily modified to be "allergy-free"; we substituted maple syrup or sorghum syrup for the molasses and rice flour plus a tablespoon of cornstarch for the all purpose flour. Voila!
• Most gluten-, soy-, and dairy-free alternatives are more expensive than the more popular ingredients and products. This probably goes without saying, but I think it's worth highlighting here. Hanna and I are, luckily, in a position to follow this diet without a great deal of inconvenience: We live in a location with multiple Whole Foods and local co-op options for these alternative ingredients. e can switch to buying rice or quinoa flour at $2-plus per pound instead of wheat flour. We can buy more eggs to bolster our protein intake. We can buy maple syrup instead of honey or molasses. We can (occasionally!) buy a loaf of store-made gluten-free bread at $6.99/loaf rather than wheat bread at half that price. When we don't want to cook after a long day at work, we can order $40.00 worth of vegetarian sushi or Thai food (no wheat or dairy products) instead of a $12 pizza or a burger at McDonald's. If it turns out we have to dig in and figure out how to let go of one or more class of food for the long haul, we will hopefully find ways to make it more affordable. But in the meantime, we don't have to worry about penny-pinching. Not everyone with food allergies is so fortunate.
• Gluten-free cookbooks, magazines, and blogs are prone to preachy-ness. It's trendy right now to go gluten-free, and while we're finding it undeniably useful to be able to take advantage of the products, restaurants, and ingredients available because of this ... it's not exactly an inviting atmosphere when you're not convinced that going gluten-free will solve all your health problems, the world's political problems, plus make you live forever.

I won't bore you with the ins and outs of sorting our kitchen out, but I'll close this post by sharing a recipe for rice salad I invented this week and we quite enjoyed.

IMPROMPTU MAPLE-MUSTARD RICE SALAD

Mix together:
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 persian cucumbers, diced
1 cup English peas
1 large sweet potato, diced, sauteed in olive oil and fresh thyme
1.5 cups cooked rice (we used a wild rice mix)

Toss thoroughly with dressing:
1 part olive oil
1 part maple syrup
1 part dijon mustard
2 parts balsamic vinegar
salt, to taste

Chill overnight to combine flavors.

"homosexual marriage?" (1953) & "the gay guide to wedded bliss" (2013)

(via)

This weekend, I'm reading several chapters of Tracy Baim's Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America (Prairie Ave. Productions/Windy City Media, 2012) for the New England Archivists LGBTQ Issues Roundtable quarterly discussion group (say that five times fast). One of the best things about the book is that between each chapter comes a long section of press clippings illustrating some of the publications, articles, and events they discuss in the text. Paging through one such section I noticed the cover pictured above.

Many opponents of same-sex marriage talk as if the quest for marriage equality is some latter-day issue invented around 1995 by activist judges. Even some queer rights activists assume that the push for marriage rights either came out of the AIDS crisis of the eighties (which certainly gave it a boost), and/or is a domestication of the movement -- something palatable for mainstream America to swallow (also a partial truth). In light of those attitudes, I think it's interesting to see that as early as 1953 -- sixty years ago -- the LGBT community was exploring the question of same-sex marriage.

Relatedly, anyone else notice the cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic?

In "The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss," Liza Mundy asks, "What can gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony?" and "What if same-sex marriage does change marriage, but primarily for the better?" She points out (as many feminists and queer folks have been doing for, um, decades):

Same-sex spouses, who cannot divide their labor based on preexisting gender norms, must approach marriage differently than their heterosexual peers. From sex to fighting, from child-rearing to chores, they must hammer out every last detail of domestic life without falling back on assumptions about who will do what. In this regard, they provide an example that can be enlightening to all couples. Critics warn of an institution rendered “genderless.” But if a genderless marriage is a marriage in which the wife is not automatically expected to be responsible for school forms and child care and dinner preparation and birthday parties and midnight feedings and holiday shopping, I think it’s fair to say that many heterosexual women would cry “Bring it on!”

I have to say, painting a picture of same-sex couples "hammering out" our domestic lives makes it sound like we're drawing up intensive prenups and chore charts. Perhaps some people do (and if it helps you, go for it)! In my experience, it's more just the freedom from falling into cultural patterns of "wives cook, husbands wash up" (my grandparents' pattern), or "husbands wash the car and mow the lawn, wives do laundry and remember family birthdays." In our case, we're also aided by the fact that both sets of (hetero) parents were mindfully and/or of necessity non-traditional in their spousal roles -- something that I think is often overlooked when people ask why some relationships are more egalitarian than others: parental modeling! (Perhaps because, sadly, it's still a rarity.)

I have grumbles about The Atlantic penning this article as if it's a possibility that's just occurred to them -- what queer folk might have something to offer the wider world! And I'm also slightly irritated (paradoxically, it seems) for the framing of marriage equality as a "control group" for heterosexual marriage. Um -- don't we get to simply exist without being one half of a scientific experiment.

Also, what's up with the sudden resurgence in mainstream articles hauling up the myth of "lesbian bed death" from the murky depths? First last week's woefully glossy and irritating NYT magazine article on female arousal, and now this, where a researcher suggests that the "lesbians [in her study] may have had so much intimacy already that they didn’t need sex to get it."

... O_O

That suggestion implies a) that women use sex to gain intimacy or they don't need it and therefore, b) there may be such a thing as "so much intimacy" that you kill your sex life.

O_O ...

This is just such a limited understanding of the role of sex in human life that I can't even.

But I'm also struck by the fact that a publication as culturally staid, if not hard-core conservative, as The Atlantic, has published such an article -- a mere sixty years after the August 1953 issue of ONE Magazine was held for three weeks by the post office while they tried to determine whether it was violating U.S. obscenity laws.

Anyway. Have you read the Atlantic piece? If so, what did you think of it?

'the future of marriage' live-blog: goods in conflict

Welcome to part six of my live-blog reading of David Blankenhorn's The Future of Marriage (2007). You can read part one, part two, part three, part four and part five here. 

Chapter seven of The Future of Marriage is where we reach the heart of David B.'s case against same-sex marriages achieving widespread cultural and legal legitimacy. I will remind readers at this point that since writing this book -- and since his role as an anti-same-sex-marriage witness in the Proposition 8 trial -- Blankenhorn has revised his vision of marriage to include same-sex couples. That said, I think a significant number of opponents of same-sex marriage still draw support from his framing here to try and legitimize their position.

Most significantly, I'd argue, they try to draw causal links between same-sex marriage and ... whatever it is they fear about the changing norms of married life. While it's fair to say that these things (same sex marriage and ... more open poly relationships, or higher rates of birth control use, or less cultural stigma around divorce, to name a few shocking modern practices) are historically contemporaneous -- perhaps even an argument to be made that they are emerge from a deeper shift in sexual mores in the West -- it doesn't follow that a shift in how we understand one of these things (same-sex committed, dyadic relationships) will automatically cause a parallel shift, in some ill-defined way, in how we understand all those other things.

Which brings me to the opening sentence of chapter seven, "Goods in Conflict," in which David B. asserts that -- surprise! -- "The central argument for gay marriage is not an argument about marriage" (171). Instead, he argues, we gays are seeking "human dignity" and "basic rights," and selfishly using marriage as a proxy to reach those ends.

On the one hand, I'm not going to argue that I don't want human dignity and basic rights (duh), and I agree with him, as I'm sure many LGBT activists do, that marriage as a social institution has become the late-twentieth/early-twenty-first century short-hand for social acceptance of queers -- a shorthand that inevitably cannot stand in for enduring, holistic change. As E.J. Graff so poignantly reminded us last week, in many states in this Union we might be able to get married -- but we can still be fired for being queer.

On the other hand, in the context of this chapter it's clear what David B. is trying to do is divorce the pursuit of rights and dignity from access to marriage rights. If he can reassure his readers that it's possible to support the pursuit of equality without revising the cultural vision and legal structure of marriage to include same-sex couples, then he's reassured them they can be pro-straight without being anti-gay, supporting the anti-gay folks who want desperately to be seen as "nice people" even as they seek to deny gay people access to the structures of our society that are the building blocks of dignity and basic rights (for example, the right to marriage).

Having dismissed the gay marriage = dignity and rights argument, David B. next dismisses the commonly-posited analogy between rights struggles around sexual orientation and rights struggles around race. In this specific context, the comparison between laws barring same-sex marriage and laws barring interracial marriage.

Setting aside, you'll notice, the fact that interracial same-sex couples exist, who face discrimination on both levels.

Canton Everett Delaware III: denied the right to marry his black boyfriend
(Doctor Who, "Day of the Moon," new series S6 E2)

In fact, the charge is leveled at us that supporting same-sex marriage is actually more appropriately analogous to racist arguments against miscegenation (172):

The analogy [between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage] is false -- not simply intellectually weak, not merely confusing or misleading, but entirely and totally false. The fact that so many highly credentialed people in our society regularly shout it from the rooftops does not make it any less false.

The fact that "highly credentialed people" support an idea also doesn't make it any less true, either, if it supported by the evidence. Yer Blankenhorn offers paltry evidence to support this accusation of total falsehood, simply a re-assertion of his universal definition of marriage as arrived at in earlier chapters:

It is false at two levels. First, two men (or two women) seeking to marry one another is not remotely similar to a black person of one sex seeking to marry a white person of another sex. 

Except that ... they are two people seeking to marry one another. I'm not sure where the gaping chasm comes in. But then we get to the kicker:

At a deeper level, yesterday's proponents of anti-miscegenation laws have more in common with today's proponents of gay marriage than with those who oppose gay marriage.

Come again?

Basically, Blankenhorn tries to argue that racists and gay rights activists both sought to redefine marriage in ways that decentered babymaking: the racists by making it about, well, race, and teh gays by making it about  love and not-sex and not-babies.

And this is where we see the importance of the separation of marriage rights from human dignity, which David B. sought to establish in the opening paragraphs of this chapter -- because now he can argue that neither preventing racial mixing nor diminishing homophobia is a core function of marriage (which, let's recall, is in his mind to legally and socially tie biological parents to their offspring and to one another).

While the logic of this argument technically works, when one draws upon his purposefully narrowed (dare I say blinkered) notion of what marriage is, I find it suspiciously convenient that David B. has chosen to analogize a kinship between anti-miscegenation bigots and same-sex couples and their allies. Simply put, this is a politically-charged analogy and one which David B. has contorted to reverse so that the anti-gay folks can pat themselves on the back, reassuring themselves they're free and clear of any prejudice that looks and smells and feels like racial prejudice (who wants to be racist in their thinking and politics, right?).

But let's put these two things side-by-side again:

Preventing racial mixing
Diminishing homophobia

These are the two outside-of-the-scope-of-marriage agendas Blankenhorn sees intruding into the man-woman-babymaking situation he's envisioned. On the one hand: trying to(often violently) keep people of different races from sexual intimacy. On the other hand: trying to diminish the (often violent) prejudice against queer people by including them in one of the social institutions that recognizes the power of sexual intimacy.

It's more than a bit obscene, to my mind, that these two aims are declared morally equivalent vis a vis marriage in The Future of Marriage.

Okay, so. Now we get to the goods-in-conflict part of the chapter, which basically boils down to this -- the meat of David Blankenhorn's decision (at the time of writing this book) to continue opposing same-sex couples' right to marriage recognition: the good of same-sex marriage "bumps up against the rights of children" (188) and, because dependent children are the more vulnerable of these two groups, the same-sex couples lose out.

For this goods-in-conflict model to work, we need to accept several GINORMOUS assumptions for which David B. has not really provided a convincing argument. First, that marriage (male-female marriage) is our culture's most "pro-child institution." Second, that "the rights of children" are best served by marriage remaining open only to male-female couples. Third, that children are always, ideally, parented by their married, biological parents (of which there are assumed to be only two). Forth, that accepting same-sex marriage will come hand-in-hand with the right to "get babies any way we choose" (193) -- for which I would really like some detailed examples, because I for one don't hear proponents of same-sex marriage arguing that all forms of babymaking or child-acquiring are ethical. In fact, in the lefty-liberal-progressive circles I move in, I hear a lot of discussion about the ethics of procreation and becoming a parent by choice. So until David B. engages more deeply with that literature and those discussions, he doesn't win my confidence with this argument. Fifth, that allowing same-sex couples to marry in any way impinges on a child's right to any of the above.

Furthermore, this argument conveniently erases the rights of children who are currently being parented by same-sex couples and are vulnerable in myriad ways due to their parents being unable to access the status of married couple. Pardon me if I question whether anyone who is so blithely able to ignore the needs of some children in order to make a cleaner argument really has the rights of children in mind and heart as deeply as he believes he does.

Blankenhorn also justifies his privileging of the children parented by opposite-sex couples with the principle "the greatest good for the greatest number" (198). Simply put, we queers are a tiny minority ... so we just need to suck it up and deal with our second-class status for the good of the whole.  Again, this assumes we agree that same-sex marriage rights would be detrimental (somehow?!) to the hetero-majority (we selfish gays!) instead of making society a better place for all.

David B.'s for-the-children argument also requires conveniently erasing children who will grow up queer and/or form same-sex partnerships which they may wish to have solemnized as marriages. He writes on the final page of this chapter, "I have three children, so it's personal for me ... I am fighting for them, for the society they will be adults in, for the future." "New freedoms are hard to argue against," he opines, "even in the name of children" (212). In this framing, children (vulnerable people) are positioned as opposed to freedoms (an abstract concept). I would, in response, suggest a different framing -- one that reminded David and his supporters that children are part of queer families, and children will grow up to form queer families. Fighting for our children's future is not de facto a decision to oppose same-sex marriage and other rights for queers.

My parents, for example, see their support of my marriage, and their other acts of support for queer folk, as working toward the future they want for their children -- me and my brother and sister in opposite-sex partnerships as well -- and for any children that we end up caring for.

Overall, I think it's a telling oversight that the only children who really matter in David B.'s "goods in conflict" model are the "good" children whose parents are straight and who will grow up to be straight themselves.

from the neighborhood: arnold arboretum

Me on a knit-bombed bench, Arnold Arboretum (photo by Joseph)

This weekend, my friend Joseph is in town from Michigan, where he works at Arrowhead Alpines and recently published a book on plant breeding at home (aka plantsex!). Obviously, we spent at least some of the weekend exploring plant-y things in the Boston area, including a glorious visit to Arnold Arboretum.

I hadn't been to the Arb since maybe 2008? I'm absolutely not going to leave it so long before I go back.

It was a perfect half-cloudy day to wander around experimenting with nature photography.

Next time, though, I'm gonna bring a book and a thermos of tea and settle in for a long afternoon of reading out-doors. Maybe in this tree ...

Joseph was super-excited to see this dove tree, planted in 1904; he says it's the oldest dove tree in the United States (the earliest tree we saw was a bonsai started in the late 1700s!)

The azaleas were blooming everywhere in all shades from white to deep fuschia. These were a salmon red, though the camera made them come out pink.

As were the lilacs...

I'm looking forward to chilling by this lake sometime soon with my wife and a picnic from the Harvest Co-op.

from the neighborhood: "sunshine and delightful"!

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a rose for Hanna from a woman who sells flowers along the street between work and the T station.

I stopped at the soon-to-be-closing City Housewares store to pick up a jar to keep it in. The clerk I always chat with, when I shop there, suggested that I'd better be ready to tell my wife what I wanted for supper when I brought it home.

Hanna's actual first response was, "Are you breaking up with me?!"

I think we had pasta salad for supper. 'Twas very tasty.

The cats were unimpressed (although Teazle later discovered a taste for rose leaves and we had to move the flower to higher ground).

They have been busy enjoying the spring weather, which Accuweather recently informed us was "Sunshine and delightful."

The cats are making the most out of the "kitty shelf" we constructed from pillows and blankets along the back of the couch.

Although sometimes Teazle loses track of her back end...

We have a friend in town this weekend, so expect light posting for the next ten days or so -- I promise I'll be back on board with The Future of Marriage in due course, and likely more cat photos.

Because I've become the crazy lesbian cat lady who will haunt your Internet for evermore ...

marriage equality and female suffrage: step by step change

So I haven't written anything about the recent state-level victories in the push for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. But congratulations Rhode Island, Delaware, and Minnesota! We have friends in all three states who are feeling better about their country now, because their state legislatures have chosen to be more welcoming in the face of family diversity and human sexual diversity. I can only hope this trend continues.

And of course we're all waiting on tenterhooks for the DOMA ruling to be handed down by the end of the term.

As a historian, I've been watching the concurrent process of state-level victories and the DOMA challenge mindful of the way past struggles over the expansion of citizenship and constitutional protections have similarly progressed in fits and starts across our federated landscape.

Consider these two infographics:

(via)

(via)

I don't have any Big Important Thoughts about this process at the moment, except to say that I think people who argue we should leave the process to the states ignore the important role that our national government plays protecting the rights of minority populations ... and that people who are eagerly pushing for a national right to same-sex marriage sometimes ignore the symbiotic relationship between state and federal rights campaigns.

When this is all over, there will be a PhD dissertation in a comparative treatment of the woman suffrage and marriage equality campaigns (victories?!).

Addendum: It occurred to me, on my morning commute, that another parallel between the woman suffrage campaign and the marriage equality campaign is that both are specific issue campaigns that brought a diverse coalition of people with wide-ranging agendas together on one thing they could agree to push for. They are also both comparatively narrow victories that leave some folks unprotected (African-American women in the South; trans folks in many states) and run the risk of making it seem like all inequalities for a certain class of people have been swept away in a single moment.

The 19th Amendment, as we know nearly a century later, did not erase sexism and misogyny from our national landscape; marriage equality will not erase heterocentrism and anti-gay discrimination (as E.J. Graff points out in the link above). We would do well to remember that, even as we move forward in celebration.