From Salon.
I went to church in San Francisco on Sunday, the big stone church on Nob Hill, whose name is an old slang term for a rich person, where a gaggle of railroad tycoons built their palaces high above the squalid tenements of the poor back in the Gilded Age, and there with considerable pomp we baptized a dozen infants into the fellowship of faith and we renounced the evil powers of this world, which all in all is a good day's work.
....
I want to believe in the kindness of strangers. I believe that if voters actually knew gay couples, they would not vote to ban gay marriage. This particular cruelty is the result of social separation, which breeds contempt. I know something about that, having spent time in grad school. When I was 24 I was an insufferable snob, thanks to lofty isolation from the ordinary tumult of life, and what cured me eventually was entering the field of light frothy entertainment. When you strive to amuse a crowd of strangers, you have to drop your pants, and a man without pants gives up the right to look down on anybody.
....
And here, this morning, in a city famous for eccentricity, we strangers in a cathedral embrace other people's children and promise to fight the good fight in their behalf, a ceremony that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. We renounce evil powers. I renounce isolation and separation and the splendid anonymity of the Internet and the doink-doink-doink of the clicker propelling me through six Web sites in five minutes. I vow to put my feet on the ground and walk through town and make small talk with clerks and call my mother on the phone and put money in the busker's hat. We welcome the infants into our herd and though some of them sob bitter tears at the prospect, they are now in our hearts and in our prayers and we will not easily let them go.
Lovely sentiments, yes? And yet...and yet...an earlier column of Keillor's came to mind as I read the recent piece. Both columns returned to my mind again and again, and I decided to write about them.
From Salon, then:
I grew up the child of a mixed-gender marriage that lasted until death parted them, and I could tell you about how good that is for children, and you could pay me whatever you think it's worth.
....
Nature is about continuation of the species -- in other words, children. Nature does not care about the emotional well-being of older people.
Under the old monogamous system, we didn't have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents -- Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck -- and need a program to keep track of the actors.
And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.
The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.
Keillor apologized on his website for his words in the earlier piece, but, as you see if you read the comments, not everyone is satisfied with the apology. Keillor says that the column was "tongue in cheek" and then moves on to what I see as the some-of-my-best-friends-are-gay defense.
A gay man leaves the following comment:
I am a gay man in my mid-twenties living in a conservative state where gay marriage was voted down on a ballot. Even the liberal politicians in my state are too spineless to stand up for gay rights. Those are the sort of people who deserve shaming and public outrage. I have been a huge fan of yours since I discovered public radio and your work in my teens. I remain a loyal fan today.
From another gay man:
I read, then re-read the article as it appears in Salon.
I'm sorry, but how was I to know this was tongue-in-cheek? In the current world of Fox News your column seems tame, and I believe one requirement of satire is that the intended audience be able to reasonably identify the work as such.
Perhaps if you had mentioned your own multiple marriages I would have gotten the joke. The way the piece read it just seemed like you had turned into Andy Rooney, complaining about the rock and or roll turning the kids into hooligans.
Please, if you're going to indulge in swiftian satire, for all our sakes, try to be more...well, swift!
I laughed out loud at the second comment, because the writer expressed my sentiments exactly, but with cleverness and wit far beyond my capability.
At the present time, I have quite a few gay friends, and I admit at times to feeling on shaky ground when deciding what humor is acceptable for me to speak and what is not, simply because I am not gay. However, I would not use humor such as Keillor's in his older column. Also, if you look at my sidebar, you will see a four-parter titled "Confessions of a Recovering Homophobe". Today, I can't even read what I wrote some years ago. I cringe, and then I just stop, but I leave the links to the posts in a prominent place as a reminder to myself to strive to be humble and not to judge. I may be over-sensitive because of my past prejudice - or not.
What you think?
I think you're appropriately sensitive, but then again I'm not gay either.
ReplyDeleteI'm a lesbian, and have read your "Confessions". As the ad says, "You've come along way, baby!" I'm glad your in "our" corner, and appreciate that you had the transformation you did. And you've been banned on a blog that shall remain anonymous that regularly sputters and whines about how "my kind" has spoiled the Episcoparty. That's cool! So, you are a far cry from the rambling commentary of Garrison Keillor.
ReplyDeleteI want to give him the benefit of the doubt (Until proven otherwise) that he has grown and changed much like many who once they got to know the people realized they were just that - ordinary people who have hurts, wants and needs like the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteI have said it before and I'll say it again - the account of your transformation is both breathtaking in its honesty and humility.
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful for your friendship.
Garrison, schmarison. Mimi is what matters.
Maybe its all about the generation gap. Since I've appreciated Keilor's humor for many years, and he and I are of the same generation, I never took his comments as anything other than tongue-in-cheek.
ReplyDeleteMimi, anyone who's been around gay people for any length of time begins to appreciate that we survive by bathing ourselves in large batches of sarcasm and dry wit. And by laughing at ourselves and with our friends. We know who we are, and most surely, we can detect b;llsh;t a mile away.
You, ma chère commarade, exude nothing but good will and good humor.
Thanks for your kind words, and thank you for your comments. I want to know what others think about Keillor's words from the past (2007), because they've been much on my mind.
ReplyDeleteI thought his post on baptism to be stellar. His older posts... not really.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you Grandmere.
To use a Facebook term, I unfriended Mr. K when he made his original remarks on Gays. And his "explanation" just didn't cut it. I can take the humor of a person like Craig Ferguson because I know that there isn't a homophobic bone in his being. With Mr. K I am not so sure.
ReplyDeleteI used to listen to his show every week but now I won't listen to him. He has become anathema to me like so many other homophobes. There is no reason at all for people who are gay not to be married, I think the homophobic priesthood uses the gay issue so that people will not look to closely at them.
I appreciate you and your stance.
Too little too late, but I think I'm tired of judging people, and equally tired of being offended by their opinions.
ReplyDeleteI have enough problems keeping up with my own sins, to worry publicly or privately about anyone else's. Well, I do worry about them privately. I'm no saint.
But I'm growing tired of worrying about them publicly. It's hard work, and the older I get, the lazier I get. Besides, it takes away from the energy I need to spend on my sins.
Anyway....
My Dear Grandmere Mimi,
ReplyDeleteYou can make whatever jokes you want because you have been accepted into the tribe. Don't worry. Your judgment is sound, and when it is not we'll forgive you right away. You are one of us.
As for Garrison, you can have him. I've never been a fan. The baptism piece was OK. But, I'm still not a fan, and even less since reading that last piece. He is unfriended with me too.
Mimi - friend
Garrison Keillor - unfriend
To live is to learn.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad to say that us gay folk have a lot to learn ourselves about "respecting the dignity of every human being." We gay men still have a lot of misogyny and racism among us, and we, of all people, really should know better.
No one scores 100 on that part of the Baptismal Covenant. We are all blundering our way through this cosmopolitan world, which can be so frightening and so very beautiful and exciting. The challenge becomes greater when we realize that we all carry multiple identities, some of which change over time.
Rmj, I'm not speaking of Keillor's "sins" nor do I judge him as a person. Keillor's choice of words is what the post is about - and about me trying to find my way without straying so far into PC territory that I become humorless. Now THAT would be sin. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks to all of you who contributed to the commentary. I find all of the thoughts expressed here enlightening.
Oh, it was much less your post than the comments, much less the comments than the idea that a person is acceptable based on whatever they've said that we might disagree with.
ReplyDeleteThe standards of behavior get a bit tough at some point. I can disagree with Keillor's earlier statements without needing a reason to reconcile myself to the pleasure his program gives me.
Contra Pat Robertson, for example, whom I prefer to simply ignore now. I don't even expend the energy to refute his foolish dribble (not to complain about your poast above). He's not worth it, IMHO. And, too, having been judged too often by people for what I said or didn't say or didn't say to their satisfaction, I've grown very chary of judging others.
So I don't judge Robertson, I ignore him (Life's too short). But that's not a judgment on anyone who wants to argue with him/refute him. And I don't want to judge Keillor. One bad statement among years of work, and I am to reconsider my opinion of him?
Too many people have done that to me over the years. I don't like the burden it creates on me, to be doing that to others.