Mommy with a Penis

I'm in San Francisco for my father's birthday and my sister shared with me the following story about my seven-year-old niece, Gracie. Gracie and her good friend were enjoying a vigorous afternoon of make believe. The friend had a fairy princess doll while Gracie had a schoolgirl doll, and Gracie suggested, "Let's pretend we're walking down the street and we bump into each other. And then, let's pretend we fall in love and want to get married, but we can't because the government says it's against the law."

Last week, Dr. Laura Schlessinger dropped the N-bomb on her radio show while giving advice to a female African American caller. Actually, dropped is the wrong word; strafed might be more apt, for to drive her self-proclaimed philosophical point home (although I could tell you neither what her point was nor to what philosophy she ascribes) she repeatedly blasted her black caller and radio listeners with N-bomb following N-bomb, making me think, perhaps incongruously, of the last image of Bonnie and Clyde . Subsequently, Dr. Laura has announced on Larry King Live that she will quit radio. She explains, "I want to regain my First Amendment rights," whatever that's supposed to mean. According to Dr. Laura, her rights "have been usurped by angry, hateful groups who don't want to debate, they want to eliminate." And so, before these treacherous groups get their diabolical way, she has decided to sign off when her contract ends at the end of the year. I have a

"Roger, do you take Dave to be your lawfully wedded husband..." It's hard to believe that those words could incite such fear and hatred. That there are those who see gay marriage as the onset of the Apocalypse. In my own little world, dissolving Prop 8 actually seems the natural course of things, however the same ruling has caused others to mutilate. At the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, to which I have never been (something else to add to the bucket list) a sculpture of two grooms atop a wedding cake was vandalized. It was part of a group show called, "Some Assembly Required: Race, Gender and Globalization." The piece was created by artist Susan Tibbles, which is just a fun name to say , for a 2008 op-ed piece in the LA Times entitled Marriage Isn't the Half of It , by Nancy D. Polikoff. The museum's publicity coordinator recounted, "The two guys were unfortunately torn off and thrown about the gallery along with some other embellishmen

Yesterday's front page of the Los Angeles Times blared, "Ban on gay marriage overturned." Now, don't get me wrong, I'm elated that Prop 8 was kicked in the nads. Well, maybe not elated, more like cautious. I couldn't quite revel like the thousands of other gays and lesbians who partied hard two night ago in West Hollywood, the Castro and the Little Caesar's in Pacoima. You see, I'm having a difficult time trusting Judge Walker's landmark ruling will hold, as I've had a difficult time trusting my legal marriage will remain, well, legal...I don't care what anyone says, it will always be a marriage. All it takes these days is some Bible thumping organization, or Target trust fund baby, or a state like Utah to throw a gazillion dollars towards the appeal and we'll be right back at square one, or maybe, square negative seventy-eight, and my kids will be bastards once again. I know, I know, it's an ugly word, bastards . But my children&#