Via Isaac Chotiner, a true work of genius from the Weekly Standard:
Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one’s few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints. There is no particular reason to ban sexual intercourse between brothers, a father and a son of consenting age, or mother and daughter…A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships.
[….]Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband.
[….]Gay marriage may reside outside the kinship system, but it has all the wedding-planning, nest-building fun of marriage but none of its rules or obligations (except the duties that all lovers have toward one another). Gay spouses have none of our guilt about sex-before-marriage. They have no tedious obligations towards in-laws, need never worry about Oedipus or Electra, won’t have to face a menacing set of brothers or aunts should they betray their spouse.
[….]Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system–a system from which you have been spared. Imitate our self-surrender.
There is no way to improve this piece.
Scott
Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system—a system from which you have been spared. Imitate our self-surrender.
Isaac Chotiner’s gonna be sleeping on the couch for the rest of the year.
Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband.
This is the most fucked-up thing I’ve read in ages.
dmsilev
Not true. It needs at least one, and preferably two, wet suits.
-dms
Fencedude
Uhh…don’t the vast majority of wives and mother’s-in-law loathe each other?
Bill E Pilgrim
Wow.
It’s like there’s a party in my brain and everyone drank too much and vomited.
What makes it genius is the…. well, the….
No, all of it. You really can’t choose a most batshit crazy part.
So let’s see, when you get non-opposite-married you don’t have:
In-laws
Guilt about sex
Any obligations toward relatives of your partner whatsoever, nor to your partner actually.
That’s it. I’m switching sides.
I once said, momentarily tired of the exes, history, relatives and so on that came with relationships, that my next girlfriend was going to be “an orphan with amnesia”.
Never happened of course, but according to the NRO, being in a gay couple is the next best thing!
kid bitzer
unbelievable. this guy pretends to be an *advocate* for straight marriage? he makes it sound *horrible*.
i mean, i’ve been married for more decades than this jerk’s been alive, and it’s been an utter blast. a positive pleasure.
a huge benefit to my life, welfare, and satisfaction, and very possibly the best thing that ever happened to me.
and this schmuck oozes grudging resentment and ill-concealed hostility to his wife and to marriage in general.
damn.
once again, it seems that the straights are utterly letting down the institution of marriage, and gay people are the ones who are actually celebrating and valuing it.
Georgia Pig
That guy definitely needs some box turtle love.
NonyNony
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I think that’s actually what about a quarter of the anti-gay activists are worried about. That being gay is actually so much better than being straight that if there weren’t any social stigma associated with it, every man would go gay by choice and the human race would end. This says a lot about their own personal psyches, but not much else.
And given Chotiner’s piece, he must hate his marriage. Really, he should talk to a marriage counselor or a divorce lawyer – his probably apparently isn’t with other people’s marriages, it seems to be with his own.
Mainer
The piece is also deeply screwed up when it comes to what it says about straight women.
Virginity until marriage? Controlling women’s sexuality? What decade is this man living in? The vast majority of women have sex before marriage in the United States. Is he advocating keeping women in their father’s home in order to protect their virginity for their husband?
None of the Jewish women I know, in Chicago or elsewhere, are “unpaid servants.” Add self-loathing stereotypes of Jews to Schulman’s portfolio.
Oh and this guy has been married three times and seems to have a thing for his mom.
Forgive me while I get nauseous.
Bill E Pilgrim
@NonyNony:
Which is particularly nuts if they stopped to think about it for even a moment, since aside from the ones clearly in denial, do the real heterosexuals actually imagine suddenly changing who they themselves are attracted to?
Tom Tomorrow had a funny bit with Trent Lott looking at a hunky intern and saying “But no, dammit, I choose to be straight!”
JGabriel
Scott:
Minor fix.
Isaac Chotiner’s Wife: “For the last time, just because I do not indulge your diaper fetish does not mean I am colluding with your mother!”
.
kid bitzer
wait now–isaac chotiner didn’t write this tripe.
some loser named “sam schulman” wrote it.
chotiner himself links to it and demolishes it, same as dougj did. that’s what “via” means.
i mean, let’s at least defame the right guy, kay?
Curt
Hey folks–Sam Schulman is the guy who wrote all that garbage, and Chotiner is the guy who brought it to DougJ’s attention by mocking it. Most of the comments above seem to attribute Schulman’s views to Chotiner–an honest mistake, but considering the views, let’s get it right and not lambaste the wrong person.
Hillary Rettig / www.lifelongactivist.com
wow – this one brought me out of lurk mode to say, just: wow
reminds me of Imus’s line about how he supports gay marriage because, “why should they be any less miserable than the rest of us?”
Dennis-SGMM
I’ve only been married for thirty one years. My wife completes me. My brother’s male partner completes him. Chotiner is so fucking stupid that his own fist refused to date him.
aimai
Umm? Boobies? I’m just saying. Its pretty clear that there are some significant differences, for men, between heterosexual and homosexual love objects. Its not all about virginity and free sex.
aimai
Comrade Baron Elmo
Where in Jebus’ name does this joker get such hogwash? What is he saying here? Gays have no problem with incest, because the “you’ll have deformed kids” law doesn’t apply to them? Constraints and prohibitions are the essence of a good marriage? The function of matrimony is to “create forbidden relationships”?
This guy clearly feels cheated by the hetero hand he was dealt, and the very idea of happy, contented gay couples gets his dander up something fierce. Perhaps to save his peace of mind, Chotiner should attempt a team switch, and hammer the square peg he is into the round hole of hot man-on-man love… think Lindsay Graham could lend him a hand?
Hawes
Is this Peak Wingnut? Or is this guy simply a “romantic sociopath” with no human empathy or connection?
I propose Schulman’s corollary to Godwin’s Law: If you have been married more than twice, you have been permanently banned from discussing marriage in public.
That goes for you, too, Newt.
Barry
“…were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.”
Is there anybody else but me who didn’t react with (1) yuck!
amnd (2) ‘closet case!’.
kay
@Comrade Baron Elmo:
It also doesn’t make sense. The writer has been married three times.
There’s no biological incest prohibition between stepchildren of a prior marriage, or even, his male children of a previous marriage and his current wife.
Arlie
The majority of the “traditional” marriage proponents are some of the most self-loathing men I have ever seen. Notice how they all claim that men only care about sex, but “heroically” restrain themselves for the sake of marriage and delicate women kind. Why such a low opinion of men, guys? It is like they all believe that there is nothing more to men than a raging libido. That is probably why they hate the idea of same-sex marriage so much. They see marriage as part of an oppressive and rigid gender system and they think same-sex marriage is bucking the system. I mean if they are unhappy, shouldn’t everybody else be?
The Other Steve
Does it mention that banning gay marriage is an example of small limited government?
JackieBinAZ
if he’s been married three times, he must know what he’s talking about.
Wilson Heath
My (opposite sex) wife and I apparently have a gay marriage. Who knew? No “Fun with Incest,” but other than that.
Ash Can
The inside of Schulman’s head is a bad, bad place.
R-Jud
Um, what? I don’t know about other women, but I always rebuff my mother-in-law’s attempts to control my husband.
Svensker
Apparently this guy never got to the point in any of his 3 marriages where friendship, companionship, having fun and caring for each other kick in. Needless to say, gays would never participate in any of those activities, either. (By his logic, does this mean that Schulman is really gay?)
DougJ
Sorry, I thought that was clear, since I said “via Chotiner” but I guess you’re right, some people seem to be confused, so I should have been more clear.
kay
It’s almost sad that this man sees his entire family exclusively in terms of who can’t have sex with whom.
I’d avoid him at reunions. Sit somewhere else. Maybe start a game so the kids don’t go over there either.
I think you have to plan, in these situations.
uila
I’m confused. Is this the author’s way of outing himself? Nothing his first two wives didn’t already know..
Tim in SF
This is like Back to the Future, except this guy WANTS to return to 1955 to live.
Jay C
@kid bitzer:
Umm, you’re right, kb: for me, the nut graf in Mr. Schulman’s tour-de-force of wingnuttery (leaving aside, for the moment, his simplistic assumption that the structure of society , and its views of “marriage” in the 21st-Century USA is little differnt from that of Bronze Age Hittite peasantry) is this:
Yeah, nothing like an “argument from authority”!
IndieTarheel
For anyone who was wondering what undiluted crazy sounded like (from anyone NOT named Michele Bachmann), you now have your answer.
Interrobang
Funnily enough, I’m inclined to believe what he says about the function of marriage. As a radical feminist, I think he’s got the functions of traditional, patriarchal marriage nailed. Yes, traditional marriage is about placing men in kinship obligations (through which they benefit significantly even as there are some minor drawbacks) and controlling women’s sexuality by treating them as property and a source of cheap domestic labour. (I would point you to current studies that show that marriage increases men’s lifespans, but decreases women’s.)
Unfortunately, what worries me about the piece is that he says it like it’s a good thing. I really have to wonder about his wives. Were they self-loathing masochists, ignorant, thick, or all of the above? I mean, it’s beyond me why any woman in their right mind would marry someone who practices undiluted Patriarchy Classic when there are so many available opportunities to get by under Patriarchy Lite.
Tim O
” in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs”
Please pass the Grey Poupon!
noncarborundum
I don’t get this “few permissible” vs. “many impermissible” bit. Does this guy think he’s closely related to everybody? Or is he only attracted to his sisters (not to mention mom)?
ETA: In moderation? Why?
joe from Lowell
I love it when wingnuts set out to write an essay about marriage, and end up drawing a map of their own eff-ed up psyches.
National Review once ran a piece from a writer who explained that society needed to have a very strong taboo against gay sex because…I swear to God I’m not making this up…sex with another man is just so incredibly hot, so much better than sex with a woman, that men would en masse stop having sex with women and society would die out. Men know what men like, you see, much better than women do.
I couldn’t stop laughing for days.
Hillary Rettig / www.lifelongactivist.com
oops – correcting my own 13 – it wasn’t Imus but the vastly superior Kinky Friedman who said that.
Hill
Ash
This guy has got to be fucking with everyone. This is perhaps the best cast against traditional marriage that I’ve ever read.
Nancy Beth
Awesome. Wingnuts are opposed to gay marriage because they can’t fuck their sisters – duly noted.
R. Porrofatto
A gem, indeed. Hard to believe he’s only been married three times – could give Stanley Kurtz a run for America’s Top Marriage & Sex Expert.
scarshapedstar
Wait, is he talking about marriage or some kinda kinky ball-gag ‘n gimpsuit S&M shit?
I sure hope we don’t find him hanging from a belt with two wetsuits on…
Curt
One of the comments from the Chotiner post refers to this Schulman piece where he describes a kiss he received from Harold Bloom:
I’m not kidding at all.
chriskillian
@kid bitzer:
What he said.
cyntax
@Nancy Beth:
Their sisters and their moms:
Jeebus, that’s a whole mess of Freudian ick to be stepping in before I’ve had breakfast.
These guys really are the most infantilized man-babies to be walking the earth. I used to just think the best proof of that was their jingoistic foreign policy but… damn.
This is a strong argument that no self-respecting straight woman should ever date a dude who doesn’t support gay marriage.
tavella
This somewhat reminds me of Orson Scott Card’s rantings about homosexuality and gay marriage, where he believed they both had to be banned because obviously men would always want to fuck other men, the sex was so much better.
Because wow, was it way more of an insight into his repressed-gay psyche than anything intelligent to say.
Tattoosydney
Whatever you have been smoking, Sam, you really need to stop.
Honestly, just stop. If I cheated on my (same sex) husband, his mother (the one eyed, ex-lesbian) would travel 2000 miles, accompanied by his three sisters, to personally remove my scrotum.
No, just less frequent.
What a dickwad. Now I am going to go back to my bed, burrow my legs under the blanket/dog, snuggle up next to the sweetest man in the world, and go to sleep happy.
You’re a sad, pathetic man, Sam Schulman.
rachel
This guy has got to be some kind of elaborate troll. Right?
Shalimar
How in the world has this prize found three women willing to marry him? Has he heard of prostitutes, or just picking up random women in a bar? There are plenty of women out there willing to rent out a little loving, you don’t have to buy permanent access like they’re property with only one useful purpose.
Betsy
This guy just *has* to be a mole for pro-gay-marriage crowd. Doesn’t he? And a brilliant one at that. Because even with my best effort, I could not have created such a terrifying indictment of traditional marriage.
freelancer
This Sam fellow is gayer than 8 guys blowing 9 guys…in a church closet.
Krista
This guy is seriously, seriously fucked up. Married straights, raise your hands: how many of you are worried about Oedipus or Electra, and how many of you do feel guilty about the sex you had before you got hitched?
Okay, and married (or otherwise committed) gays, raise your hands: how many of you never have to deal with in-laws, and wouldn’t have to deal with your honey’s family being out for your blood if you screwed around?
/crickets
Thought so.
That man needs serious, serious help.
Betsy
And holy god, does this dude have a problem with women. Second only to his confusion about the nature of gay marriage (gay spouses don’t have to deal with the in-laws? really? how does that work?) is his view of women as sex- and baby-machines whose bodies must be policed, even as they are ruining all your fun with their wifeyness.
Oh, and BTW, if my (hypothetical) fiance thought that by marrying me, he was *giving up* his “immediate erotic desires,” I would be pretty damn hurt and angry, and would tell him that he needed to find someone with whom he was more compatible. This author seems to imagine that women have no independent interest in sex.
PhoenixRising
If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill’s daughter from marrying Tommy. The relationship between Bill and Tommy is a romantic fact, but it can’t be fitted into the kinship system.
Um, call Mia Farrow right away and tell her that the nightmare she’s had for the past 20 years was just a bad dream…her daughter is not really married to a man with whom her ‘relationship’ was a ‘romantic fact’.
Could we have one example of how same-sex couples live outside the existing rubric of the Patriarchy As Sam Knows It, which seems to be his ill-supported thesis (read ‘thesis’ here as ‘delusion’) that is not both easily refuted by the antics of famous unmarried opposite-sex couples AND itself an argument to reduce potential human suffering and discomfort by formalizing and legalizing same-sex couples?
Also: Take my MIL…please! If this doofus seriously thinks that it’s all sodomy and umbrella drinks and no mouthy yet ignorant in-laws around here, he needs to get out more.
Comrade Darkness
This most profound aspect of marriage—protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex—is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)—these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers
This isn’t true at all. I’ve been to butch-femme weddings.
Are we sure this author isn’t a bored, Jane Austen thesis writing mole from the left?
or BoB?
Anton Sirius
The Weekly Standard: We were reactionary in the Fifties!
jcricket
I had to add something to this – Something like 90-95% of people who are married report having sex before they were married. And guess what, this percentage has remained constant since the 1940s. Yes, that’s right studies going as far back as the 1940s shows that sex before marriage was by far the norm in our society.
The average age in which people lost their virginity did decline (and the average age people get married has increased), but fundamentally, people are harkening back to a time that never was.
So, even if you grant (which I don’t) that the Ozzie and Harriet years/morals were better, outside of TV, no one was living those morals back then either.
Wayne T
holy fuckity fuck fuck fuck
Anton Sirius
Wait, wait… we missed the best part!
In other words, Schulman’s explicitly admitting up front that the fucked-up views of hetero marriage that he’s about to express are anachronistic at best and don’t have even a tenuous connection to the “dominant” reality of marriage in modern society as experienced by most people, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Shorter Schulman: My neuroses aren’t relevant to any of your lives, but I’m going to share them anyway. It’s like therapy, only I’m the one getting paid!
hal
I read this, and all I could think was; “jealous much?” It reminds me of that crude hustler cartoon where the groom is thinking; “Great! All I have to do is say I do, and blowjobs for life!” The Bride is thinking; “Great! All I have to do is say I do, and no more blowjobs!”
“Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system—a system from which you have been spared. Imitate our self-surrender”
Comrade Darkness
This Sam Shulman has been warming up on this topic for years.
See this Orthodoxy Today article from 2003. Skim the homepage for more backwards societal breathlessness.
It is a truism that many married people feel little sexual or romantic attraction to each other–perhaps because they have been married too long, or perhaps, as some men have always claimed, because the death of sexual desire is coincident with the wedding ceremony. (“All comedies are ended by a marriage,” Byron wittily and sadly remarked.) Many people–in ages past, certainly most people–have married for reasons other than sexual or romantic attraction. So what? I could marry a woman I did not love, a woman I did not feel sexually attracted to or want to sleep with, and our marriage would still be a marriage, not just legally but in its essence.
Stunning. The psychoanalyst doesn’t even need to bother bringing this guy in for diagnosis. Someone upthread mentioned him drawing a map?
Oh, and I have to add, given this tagline on the footer of the Orthodoxy Today:
features authors who write on cultural issues within a Judeo/Christian moral framework and analyze social and moral issues with particular clarity and depth.
how very well “SO WHAT?” fits into the publication’s stated style of discourse. LOLs.
Joe Buck
It sounds like this piece was written by a gay man who’s in denial. The author evidently feels that marriage to a woman is a dreary duty, while gay relationships are illicit, immoral, and lots of fun. Why would a straight man think this?
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood—and sexual accessibility—is defined.
Sam appears to have confused women with blow-up dolls. Admittedly, if you’re a wingnut, this can be a natural mistake – some of the newer models come with very realistic hair and voice chips.
Steve T.
I had been about to say that a gay teenage boy in the closet knows more about fear and guilt than this guy can imagine. But then I realized that, no, he knows all about that, because at heart he still is one.
Jeff Berardi
You think? This guy’s so deep in the closet he’s finding his third grade book reports, and that’s all that this article is really about.
Steve T.
But wait, there’s more!! There’s a passage in the original article that absolutely seals the deal on what’s going on in Schulman’s head:
Case closed.
Ked
Well…
Either this is pure snark from a liberal mole in the right-wing punditsphere (in which case it may be one of the best pieces of propaganda I’ve ever read), or a true example of a man speaking from beyond the Wingularity.
Mmm. Wings. Maybe I should duck out to BWW for some mango hab.
Roger Harrison
@Hawes:
If you’ve been divorced more than twice,maybe.
Give widowers a chance!
asiangrrlMN
Wow. With such an appetizing view of woman/man marriage, I wonder how it is that I have resisted the call for so long? As a woman who has no guilt over sex (well, very little), and who does not need a man to do whatever this fuckwad thinks a man does when he marries a woman, I am heartily relieved that I am single and that my only marriage is a fake one to a gay man who lives halfway across the world and is now sleeping next to his real hubby.
@cyntax: Actually, I have posited your last point myself. I would never date a man who didn’t support gay marriage.
Gah. If it weren’t for the penis thing, I would go Galt on men and just be a lesbian instead of bi.
asiangrrlMN
Why moderation? Let me see.
Wow. With such an appetizing view of woman/man marriage, I wonder how it is that I have resisted the call for so long? As a woman who has no guilt over sex (well, very little), and who does not need a man to do whatever this fuckwad thinks a man does when he marries a woman, I am heartily relieved that I am single and that my only marriage is a fake one to a gay man who lives halfway across the world and is now sleeping next to his real hubby.
@cyntax: Actually, I have posited your last point myself. I would never date a man who didn’t support gay marriage.
Gah. If it weren’t for the cock thing, I would go Galt on men and just be a lesbian instead of bi.
Tonal Crow
Do I detect the Deadly Sin of Envy among wingnuts?
asiangrrlMN
Seriously? P e n i s got me moderated and cock didn’t? Duly noted.
asiangrrlMN
@Tonal Crow: And lust. Don’t forget good old lust.
greennotGreen
@tatoosydney
Neither does gay copulation become in any way more permissible, more noble after marriage.
No, just less frequent.
You owe me a keyboard.
greennotGreen
Hey, how come my block quote didn’t work?
Krista
I REALLY feel sorry for this bastard’s wife. I’m sure it won’t be too long before he’ll be able to have all of the illicit sex he wants, because if his wife has any self-esteem, she’ll be divorcing his ass.
I mean, who would want to be married to a guy who, when you’re having sex, is thinking of
EnglandJake Gyllenhaal the entire time, and then goes on to write about how incredibly dreary and stultifying married sex is?grumpy realist
We get the message, Schulman, although it’s not the one you thought you were writing:
1) Can’t stand present wife? check.
2) Couldn’t stand previous wives? Check.
3) Has problems with marriage overall? Check.
4) Has definite mommy problems? Check.
5) Can’t stand women, period? Check.
6) Is secretly gay and can’t admit it to himself? Double-check….
and finally:
7) Doesn’t have the sense god gave a goose to realize he has made all of the above very, very clear to anyone with a brain cell who read his silly screed? Check and mate.
Jen R
@PhoenixRising:
Sodomy and Umbrella Drinks would be an awesome blog title.
Terri
Anyone who thinks that gays have no tedious obligations towards in-laws, has never had to sit and listen(drink) to my ex, know it all, misogynistic, passive aggressive, father-in-law. It always amazes me how right wing,antigay Christians, know SO MUCH about gay relationships.
Why is that?
kid bitzer
i just want to congratulate everyone who has contributed to this thread, because it is a thing of beauty.
i have just been reading it over and laughing, a lot.
specially h/t’s to tattoosydney, freelancer, and jeff berardi.
Gina
@Jen R: Sodomy and Umbrella Drinks would be an awesome blog title.
Or theme party for Fourth of July.
Free At Last
I just want to add how great it is that numerous people posting comments in this thread are casually mentioning issues with their same-sex spouses’ family … just the same old issues we’ve been hearing about all our lives. We have really come a long way in this country in the last few years.
Tony J
So to clarify, this Schulman guy likes his gay sex illicit and transgressive, thank you very much, and if he has to hang an arm, a leg, and just about everything short of the tether-line on his buttplug out of the closet in order to make arguments for keeping it that way, well, that’s yet another sacrifice he’s willing to make for the cause.
Jess
Many men are just terrified by their own sexual drives; they want to be rational and in control, and instead they’re ruled by overwhelming animal desires. Since they fear they cannot control themselves, they put the pressure on women to be sexually pure and say no to sex before marriage, and they enshrine marriage as the “civilized” management of animal lust. So of course their marriages are repressive and miserable–they’re supposed to be–and these men end up harboring a lot of resentment towards women (reminds of a bumper sticker I saw once: “The problem with women is that they have all the pussy”).
Now if men can marry men, then they will no longer have the “natural” feminine reticence towards sex to help them repress their own drives, so they’ll be free to indulge in a never-ending fuck-fest (or so they imagine) with other men. It’s that sexual self-indulgence they crave (and fear), not other men per se–except as fellow sinners ruled by lust. This is why they claim that gay marriage will result in the breakdown of civilization–because men will slip the leash and revert to being animals if women and traditional marriage are no longer the only source of licit sex.
AhabTRuler
I always thought that this was a feature, not a bug.
Jess
A bit of both–it depends if you want to satisfy your urges, or be a rational, civilized being (according to the conservative mind vs. matter paradigm). It’s all about ambivalence, baby!
Tenderfoot
When I first read this I thought for sure we’d been punked. Nobody is this crazy, this naively self-revealing, so illogical. But then a commenter says this guy has written stuff like this before. Dude, get help!
Nicole
I clicked on some of his other essays, including one equating abortion with honor killings in Islamic communities. And saying the reason liberals hated Sarah and Bristol Palin was their fecundity.
On this essay though- if you can stand the stupid, read it through to the end. His grand conclusion is that if gay marriage is legalized everywhere, it will fail, as gays will decide it’s not worth the trouble. And then, our moral universe will collapse, because straight people, inspired by their gay brethren’s example, will also decide marriage is bunk and then there will be nothing to stop every adult in the country from having sex with their own children. Because, of course, the concept of “traditional” marriage is the only thing stopping the majority of people from having sex with their own children.
This man is a mess. I really, really want him to be a spoof. Because he’s totally creeping me out otherwise.
Perry Como
Pic or it didn’t happen.
Delia
@Jess:
Hmm . . . this would go a long way in explaining the winger fascination with torture as well. They imagine unleashing all that pent-up hostility they’ve got inside, but they’re doing it for a virtuous cause — to save the nation or find the ticking time bomb or whatever.
warren terrah
I would like to talk to his ex’s. I bet they have some eeenturresting stories.
M. Bouffant
This is not parody. It’s “Judeo-Christian” pre-Enlightenment orthodoxy.
The Orthodoxy Today link @ No. 60 is interestingly informative.
Essentially his complaint is not Biblical, but the Catholic Church line.
And what will that crunchy con have to say?
Mayken
@kid bitzer: Yeah, I have to say I thank all my gods that I do not live in that man’s world. Marriage has been the most wonderful adventure my husband and I have ever embarked on and it wasn’t made any less special by the lack of “sex before marriage” guilt. And while my mother-in-law and I get along I am not her ally in any kind of control over her son. We don’t have the kind of relationship in which either of us feels the need to control the other. Wow! Just, Wow!
I’ll be sure to tell all my gay and lesbian friends that they have no obligations to their spouse’s family ’cause some wingnut said so.
Mayken
@Interrobang: Yes, he is correct about the historical role of marriage and yes, the most disturbing part is he seems to think this is desirable and right. Welcome to the 21st Century Mr. Shulman. Please leave your patriarchal BS at the door.
prospero
It was cute how everybody was all up on Chotiner at first. It’s almost like the choir doesn’t have time to do the required reading before they have to hurry up and start agreeing with each other.
ice9
Shelley’s poem dismisses marriage as part of a code of “modern morals.” He was indeed a cad, the type of cad who would likely embrace same sex marriage, especially if dorks like Chotiner, writing like he does, were against it.
ice
Ruemara
There’s stupid and then there’s this. This has to be the most grade-A, prime bit of surreal I’ve ever read. This ode to false conclusions, myths and delusions is the sort of piece one should hope doesn’t fall into the hands of time travelers, because they would be obligated to destroy any race that could generate such a toxic mess of bigotry. If I were not fully aware that lunacy has it’s supporters, I’d be concerned that what ever publisher of said missive had some sort of personal vendetta against the writer and was allowing them the literary equivalent of soiling yourself on the international stage. Perhaps the writer was drunk but I do believe that is an insult to drunks, addicts and other far more wholesome creative bastards than this shrunken gonad bearing wingnut.
Debbie(aussie)
thank you all so very much. Haven’t had such a wonderful, suppressed giggle (hubby is asleep),in along time.
patrick
I’m not usually one of the cool kids who gets in on things early, but I came across Mr Schulman’s tour de force a couple of days ago, and have watched with glee as it catches fire across the internets.
You guys have had me laughing so hard I peed my pants a little.
Chuck Butcher
I really hope Schulman abstains from heavy drinking, if not he’s going to end up in jail when some of his shit gets acted out.
Jeff Fecke
@88 Perry Como, Here’s the quote
Now, I myself am straight, and no matter how good the gay sex is, I’m not going to swing that way because I’m not gay — just as gay men and women aren’t going to turn straight no matter how good the lovin’ is, because they’re not straight. Just like Paul Cameron.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
I spent a lot of years researching the right professionally and I came across stuff like this all of the time– all rooted in the inherent superiority of men and steeped in misogyny.
One of the major arguments among many wingnuts is that legalizing same-sex marriage is THE MOST DANGEROUS THING because if men were given societal permission to be gay then so many men would prefer men over women– they view men as unbridled beasts that need to be domesticated by controlling, domineering women. If given a choice many men would prefer to live the life of single, free gay men. (No, they almost always exclude any discussions of lesbians. It’s all about the penis to them.) It’s truly bizarre, as many of the most homophobic wingers (Paul Cameron, Bob Knight) will at times wax poetic about homosexual attraction and relationships. In other words, they actually do get it, it sickens them, but if they were told it were OK they’d be the first in line.
Basically, scratch the surface of any wingnut and you’ll find serious unresolved mommy and daddy issues and not-too-latent homosexual urges. Otherwise why the hell do they care so much about it? A normal, average heterosexual might not love the idea but don’t spend their lives obsessing over the existence of homosexuality or same-sex relationships.
Barry
” in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs”
There are advantages to this. If there is an, um, ‘special party’ at the golf/country/polo/yacht club, and both you and your father-in-law are ‘partying’ with the attractive ‘party assistants’ hired for the occasion, it’s mutual blackmail. This is much safer than if your father-in-law has compromising materials on you, while you don’t have anything on him.
Dave S.
Shorter Schulman: “Gay Marriage – Lucky Bastards!”
Mere quotes fail to do that piece justice – you have to read it all to get the full picture. That guy’s issues have issues. Hell, it’s issues all the way down.
jerry 101
wow.
that’s all I can think of right now.
wow.
That’s fucked up.