There is someone who writes using part of my name and causes me deep shame whenever I see his byline.
His name is David Blankenhorn (right). He runs something called the Institute for American Values, and its Center for Marriage and Families. We are the same age.
He's a nut. A right-wing loon. A horse's ass.
His latest bit of nonsense is to deign and accept civil unions for gay people, albeit with the stipulation that no one with any religious conviction (which he claims to have) should be made to recognize it as conferring anything like the rights of marriage on gay people. This has cost him some street cred in wingnuttia. Poor baby.
Let me state this clearly.
Marriage is commitment. It should be for life, but when one partner to this sacred contract loses that commitment there is nothing the other party can do. Forcing misery "in the name of the children" is stupid. Yes, it's fair to test that the commitment is well and truly broken before entering a divorce, but that's a personal decision. If he or she is that much of a schmuck you never should have married him (or her) in the first place and you're well rid of them.
I have not written 8 books on marriage, like the other Blankenhorn. All I can say is that, one-third of a century ago (as of Barack Obama's inauguration) I fell in love. I fell hard. I fell for good. I'm still in love and, for some strange reason I cannot fathom, she feels the same way about me. We have two children, both on the brink of adulthood, and I hope they can find the same joy and commitment in their own lives that we have in ours.
Not because it's better for society. Not because it's better for children. But because it's the greatest thing any human being can have in their life. It's a feeling like no other, a transcendent joy. It makes life worth living.
It has nothing to do with sex.
Now I should say here that a few years after my love and I met, right around the time we married, my best friend in college met the love of his life. That love's name was Rich. My best friend and his love have been together from that day to this, almost as long as Jenni and I have been together. Their mutual commitment has been total, in sickness as well as health.
Why the other Blankenhorn would think otherwise is beyond me. But somehow he seems to think that if my friend has the same rights I do that I, or my love, or my children, will be lessened by it.
Why?
There are many, many millions of my fellow Americans who feel the same way. I feel the same way about them as I do David Blankenhorn. They are idiots, they are fools, and some probably don't know what marriage really is. Some even think Ted Haggard is married. He's not. He's a slave to the nonsense he and fools like David Blankenhorn espouse. His life is a living hell of his own making. You can't love anyone if you hate yourself.
Marriage is for children, yes. Every child deserves to have two strong, committed parents behind him or her. And the fact that gay parents are denied these rights, that their children are denied this legal protection, is absolutely mind-boggling to me. The people who care for you, who love you, and who are committed to one another as they are to you -- these are your parents. Not the sperm donor and the egg layer. Your parents are the people who raise you, and love you, and care most for you.
Anyone who would deny that, to me, they're just evil.
A friend called me just now. Her son was in a car accident. She has gone to Wisconsin to be with him, and she is honored at that hospital because she is family. But if my best friend's love had a car crash, he would not have that right, even if his love were dieing. His love would not be allowed to pass on his half of their wealth as a matter of course. If a final decision had to be made, over my best friend's love, he would not be allowed to be involved in it. Never mind their shared life, or their shared commitment of over 30 years.
It is monstrous.
I read somewhere that this other Blankenhorn considers himself a progressive. He is anything but. He's a troglodyte. Marriage isn't a compulsion, and it's not something anyone should be denied, if they are willing to be bound to its rule of commitment.
Those who do so make slavery of love. They turn the greatest joy God gives us into something as base and worthless as the life of Ted Haggard.
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