On irrational abstractitude....

Dear Amy: I am 44, and my daughter is 23.
She is gay, and I have treated her and her partner the same way I treat my son and daughter-in-law. Everyone acknowledges this. I respect their commitment to each other and am joyful that they are very happy.
However, I cannot accept the fact that she just got "married." She has now told me that she needs to terminate her relationship with me because I will not accept her marriage.
She is aware of my position on gay marriage. The suggestion to agree to disagree is not an option. What say you?
— Wondering

Dear Wondering: Many parents would be delighted for their kids to choose marriage. A wise parent knows that forcing offspring to choose between them and a romantic relationship often results in the younger person choosing the latter. Your daughter knew the risks she was running with you when she and her partner chose to marry. She did it. You may assume that she is as stubborn as you are.
Because you rule out the option of "agreeing to disagree," you really left your daughter no option but to terminate the relationship. I can only urge you to try harder to find a way to reconcile.

What I don't understand is how you can simultaneously "respect their commitment" and be "joyful that they are very happy" while also maintaining an abstract and apparently compartmentalized "position on gay marriage." I know many people DO hold their family and loved ones to a different standard than they do the rest of the world. And others (as in this case), allow an arbitrary rule to cause pain and even estrangement in a relationship that is otherwise (apparently) respectful, joyful, and loving. What I don't understand is why--or how they justify it.

If this person's stance on this issue is of paramount importance to her (a religious conviction, etc.), she can't claim to be against the marriage but supportive, respectful, and joyful about the relationship. If it's not, I don't see why she's clinging to a position that is hurtful to the daughter (and others), damaging to their family, and not actually benefiting her in any way.

When your life reveals that a rule no longer makes sense, you drop the rule, not your life.

Re-defining Girls' Night:

An interesting letter from Carolyn's column on how "Girls' Night Out" changes when both members of a couple are women (I've linked to the second page of her column because that's where the majority of the letter is...it looks like it's picking up in the middle, but you're only missing "Dear Carolyn:"):

Dear Carolyn:
I have a friend who is a lesbian. Whenever we have girls' night or traditionally women-only events (baby showers, bachelorette parties, etc.), her partner always comes. We are not really friends with the partner, although we frequently do get together as couples. It feels weird to not invite her, but it feels like she shouldn't come, either. Am I making this more complicated than it should be?
Va.

No, you have a fair point. To act on it, though, you're talking deliberate exclusion -- always, uh, challenging.
But if you state your case clearly that you see "girls' night out" not as man-free companionship but date-free companionship, and ask your friend what she thinks about that, and if your relationship with your friend is good, and if her relationship with her partner is good, then it shouldn't be a problem.
That's three "ifs" and a "should," if you're keeping score at home.

I don't even have that much to say about it, just wanted to throw it out there and see if other people have anything to share.

Seems to me that most people like to get together with their friends without their partners at least some of the time, and while for folks of any orientation there are times when the friend is the same gender as the partner (could I make this anymore semantically complicated...?), a lot of the time, for most people, this seems to break down easiest along lines of "girl time" or "guy's night." But maybe that is changing, or should?

This seems to be a case of one homosexual couple in a group heterosexual women. I wonder how this works in groups of friends who are mainly homosexual, or mixed to a more equal degree, and if that's where we'll find a useful model for emulation: creating splinter groups based on who actually enjoys certain activities ("shower for people who like tea cakes only"), or on shared history ("just college buddies") rather than along gender lines.

How have you seen this changing in your own life, or the lives of people you know?

In Media Res-ume

For reasons unknown to me, many writers (OK, I need some help standardizing my vocabulary here...when you see "writer," do you think, the person with the question, or the columnist? How should I differentiate between them in a concise and consistent way?)...

Anyway. For reasons unknown to me, before they even ask their question, many advice seekers feel the need to qualify themselves, proving that they deserve an answer, a better lot in life than they've got, and a shot at being printed (albeit under alias) in a syndicated column, by summarizing their perceived best qualities and major accomplishments.

I see this most often in the love columns, especially Tales from the Front. People griping about their horrific romantic experiences want to know why they, intelligent, solvent, reliable, honest, affectionate, hilarious, well-traveled, loving dog-owners and community leaders, etc., can't find a decent date. This litany has the opposite effect on me than the seeker intends for it to have. I grow immediately suspicious and contemptuous, and can't help but feel that the seeker doth protest too much. I sometimes write a critical letter about him or her to the columnist. But at least I understand why they've chosen to include their resume--it's part of their question: "Given this, why not this?"

But today Amy featured a writer (oops, there I go again) who did the exact same thing, for no apparent reason. The advice seeker (there MUST be a better term out there) here is a middle-aged gay man in a long-term committed relationship. He has come out to everyone in his life except his elderly mother, and wonders whether or not he should, how he should approach the subject, and even wonders why his mother has never brought it up with him first.

Inexplicably, his letter started like this:

Dear Amy: I am a 45-year-old man, own my own business, sit on the boards of several charities, and enjoy sports and travel.

I am also gay, and I have been in a committed relationship for more than seven years.

Um...congratulations on managing to be both gay, an athlete, and an entrepreneur? Are we to assume that your active lifestyle has made you too busy to arrange this heart to heart with your mother?

I don't see the connection here.

"Out, But Not Out" could have started his letter in its third paragraph (with his actual problem) and gotten right down to business. Considering that these letters are edited, I'm surprised Amy's people, or the Trib's people, didn't do it for him.

That he began his letter with a list of his accomplishments makes me wonder what he's trying to make up for. His dishonesty toward his mother? His homosexuality?

Would his question be treated differently if he were not on the boards of several charities, or if he were not in a long-term relationship? Or does he just fear that it would be?

Wedding Columns Gone Wild

Not even Dan Savage can avoid vital reader questions about wedding etiquette...

Note: when I created this blog, they (um, blogger.com) asked me to indicate whether it should be identified as containing "adult" content....I didn't even think about this until I realized that Dan Savage will probably be making occasional appearances. So I decided, I'll link to him, and talk around him, or maybe use code words when necessary....but I probably won't copy and paste excerpts from his columns here, except for the very tame bits. And then, what's the point really?

This actually works out well because Dan Savage has such a nicely maintained Web site. I'm posting extended quotes from my other columnists, when relevant, because I'm not sure if the links to their columns will go bad as time goes by--but that's no problem with the extensive Savage Love archives at our fingertips. Thank God.