"I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife."

I wonder if "the latest thing" was a new expression back in 1922 when F. Scott Fitzgerald started writing "The Great Gatsby." Was "the latest thing" the latest thing, that is, new slang? If so, it's even funnier to see it used sarcastically like this. What a crazy trend it would be — a fashionable sex kink?

But then maybe there actually is such a trend these days. The "cuckold fetish" is a routine subject in Dan Savage's sex advice column, e.g., "Fuck My Wife, Please!"

Anyway, the sarcasm in today's "Gatsby" sentence is sublime. There's "the latest thing" and "sit back and let" and the marvelous "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" — all of which only become funny — painfully funny — when you get to the tragically pedestrian phrase "make love to your wife."

It's also amusing that the problem is less that somebody is fucking his wife than that a nobody is fucking his wife. Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, who — if you violated the rules of the Gatsby project and go beyond the sentence — is the (supposedly) great Mr. Gatsby.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill Harshaw uses The Great Google to show that "the latest thing" was, in fact, a well-established expression. The casual use of the word "thing" seems like modern slang. There are a lot of common phrases like "the thing to do," "a [fill in the blank] thing," "it's my thing," and "the real thing" that seem like things people would have said 100 years ago.

ALSO IN THE COMMENTS: Much discussion about how far Mr. Nobody really got: What did "make love" mean in the 1920s?

"Is 'God, guns, and gays' losing its peril for Democrats?"

A strange way to phrase a question, in this Greg Sargent column. What does this stunning lack of parallelism reveal about the Mind of Sargent?

Indeed, I’m cautiously hopeful that this time around, Democrats will overcome their typical skittishness on guns. ... [T]he politics of this issue have changed: Democrats are less reliant on conservative, rural, gun-owning voters than at any time in the history of the party, due to Dem gains among socially moderate suburbanites, and ongoing demographic shifts that continue to boost the vote share among minorities and young voters  — all voter groups who may not see “gun rights” as a potent issue.

You know those "rural" folk, who cling to their guns and religion. Maybe they can be ignored by Democrats who have other blocs out of which to build victories. But to throw "gays" on the list... well, that's not something those horrible peasants cling to like guns and religion. It's something they're supposedly repelled by, perhaps something like the way those socially moderate suburbanites are imagined to have an aversion to God and guns.

I guess Sargent might love alliteration. GGG. But someone ought to tell him that — coming from a very conspicuous gay guy — GGG stands for "good, giving, and game":  ("good in bed," "giving equal time and equal pleasure," and "game for anything — within reason'").

And some people think "Guns, God and Government" — the work of a not-quite-earless guy with a lady's name.

What does GGG mean to you? I'm thinking, for me, grammar, graphomania, and...

"Embrace and celebrate" "Hetero-een."

An interesting Dan Savage rant about Halloween. Sorry there's no transcript, but click to listen and begin at 0:59. He takes on those who complain about the sexy costume for females (and females only) and argues that heterosexuals need a day to bust loose from all their usual inhibitions.

"3 Interesting Moments From Dan Savage's Debate With a Gay Marriage Opponent."

Conor Friedersdorf selects some morsels (and has embedded video of the entire 1-hour debate). I've listened to the whole thing and found Savage's opening statement quite well done. The same-sex marriage opponent, Brian Brown, mostly fails to address Savage's presentation and goes on about the importance of civility (which had more to do with an earlier incident in which Savage called some students "pansies" for walking out on him after he said the Bible contained some "bullshit"). Savage has apologized for the "bullshit"/"pansies" incident, and Brown had accepted Savage's invitation to talk about same-sex marriage after dinner at Savage's house, moderated by journalist Mark Oppenheimer.

Here's Oppenheimer's write-up in The New York Times. He begins:

The ancient Greek symposium, which combined drinking with elevated discussion, was often held in a private house; at Parisian salons, conversation frequently took place in the bedroom. Once upon a time, intellectuals knew they could do their best thinking at home, not in a public venue, and that debate would be helped along by food and drink.

But Oppenheimer was actually not hoping for vigorous, deep debate. He imagined home (and drink) creating an atmosphere of warmth and affinity:

It was my hope, of course, that Mr. Brown might witness a sane, functional, happy family in a bourgeois home, and consider it as another piece of evidence, something more for reason to operate on.

Savage himself thought the home setting made him to "solicitous and considerate" — since it was his home, and he was therefore the host. And it's not surprising that Brown didn't cave on his principles when confronted with the reality of gay partnership in a nice home. So that was that.

By the way, Savage's newest podcast, #304 (downloadable in the sidebar here), begins with a discussion of the shooting at the Family Research Center, which he condemns while standing by the characterization of the FRC as a "hate group." In the course of making the argument — too bad there's no transcript — he quotes this quote:

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix...."

He mocks that, but says that's not enough to count as hate. He then stuns us with the revelation that the speaker of the quote is...

Barack Obama.

"Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage..."

"with straight people who want to do the same,"  says David Blankenhorn (formerly a conspicuous opponent of gay marriage).

For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?

I don't know what that last question has to do with the rest of it. Putting that aside, he's talking about generic conservative values relating to marriage. I suppose it's easy to "agree" that these things are better than the alternative. It's harder to give up all that sex outside of marriage.

And let's not forget that one of the leading gay-rights voices, Dan Savage, has used his position to push adultery acceptance. 

[Savage] does not believe in promiscuity; indeed, his attacks on the anonymous-sex, gay-bathhouse culture were once taken as proof of a secret conservative agenda. And he does not believe that monogamy is wrong for all couples or even for most couples. Rather, he says that a more realistic sexual ethic would prize honesty, a little flexibility and, when necessary, forgiveness over absolute monogamy. And he believes nostalgically, like any good conservative, that we might look to the past for some clues.

“The mistake that straight people made,” Savage told me, “was imposing the monogamous expectation on men. Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.” In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

See? Straight people make the "mistake" of not structuring sexual norms around the male. That's the message from one man who's only interested in sex with men. What about women? Well, let them "enjoy" the sexuality that man take to naturally. Liberation, baby. The man who has no desire whatsoever to have sex with bodies like yours says so.

I can't imagine that people like Savage will tone it down because Blankenhorn is now offering to form a coalition. Wouldn't he — as I do — write off Blankenhorn as a guy who's trying to re-leverage his importance? Who needs him?

"How Changes in Straight Marriage Paved the Way for Legal Gay Marriage."

An article by Jesse Walker at Reason (linked to this morning by Instapundit). Walker links to an article by historian Stephanie Coontz that describes the changes in marriage over time: Hetereosexual couples married based love and autonomous personal choice (instead of submitting to arranged marriages); heterosexual couples moved away from traditional gender roles; laws governing the obligations of heterosexual couples were rewritten with gender neutrality (to acknowledge the mutability of gender roles). These changes have made it harder to justify denying gay couples the choice to adopt the marriage format for their relationships.

Fine. I support same-sex marriage, and I like this argument in favor of it, as I like so many other arguments in favor of something I favor. But I want to layer in another topic. If opposite-sex marriage couples influence our understanding of same-sex couples, what about the reverse? Once same-sex couples are included in the norm, they will affect the norm.
In this context, let's take a closer look about what Dan Savage — the very influential advice columnist and media figure — has been saying for years. Savage, you need to understand, is himself gay, but he's always aimed his advice primarily at heterosexuals. That's the idea: a gay male has a useful perspective.

Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

“I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

The view that we need a little less fidelity in marriages is dangerous for a gay-marriage advocate to hold. It feeds into the stereotype of gay men as compulsively promiscuous, and it gives ammunition to all the forces, religious and otherwise, who say that gay families will never be real families and that we had better stop them before they ruin what is left of marriage. But Savage says a more flexible attitude within marriage may be just what the straight community needs. Treating monogamy, rather than honesty or joy or humor, as the main indicator of a successful marriage gives people unrealistic expectations of themselves and their partners. And that, Savage says, destroys more families than it saves.

Much more at the link (which goes to a long NYT Magazine article from last year).

"Nearly a dozen of high school journalists walked out of a lecture by Dan Savage, the prominent ant-bullying advocate..."

Sorry... I just love the typo: ant-bullying. Is that something done with a magnifying glass?

But... okay... let's talk about the underlying story. Dan Savage was doing his thing....

'People often say that they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying acts because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong,' Mr Savage said.

'We can learn to ignore the bullsh*t in the Bible and what it says about gay people.'

He compared dogmatic acceptance of anti-gay teachings equivalent to adhering to verses about slavery and eating shellfish, two issues that have been reinterpreted in modern day.

My question is whether the school engages in viewpoint discrimination. Does it bring in other speakers who present other interpretations of the Bible? I doubt it.

Another politician resigns after texting a naked picture of himself.

It's some nobody in New Jersey. Seriously, who cares? Oh, but this is what we're doing now, expecting an elected official to step down because he crossed the Weiner line.

[Louis] Magazzu, a 53-year-old lawyer who had been an elected county official for more than a decade, apologized to his friends, family and constituents in a statement, but indicated he had been set up.

"I did not know that she was working with an avowed political enemy to distribute these pictures," Magazzu said of the Chicago woman he corresponded with online with for several years but claims he never met. "I have retained counsel to determine what laws may have been broken by the unauthorized distribution of those pictures."

Hey, you already resigned. What are you going to do with that lawyer? Bring on the copyright and tort lawsuits!

I'll quote Dan Savage again:

He didn't do anything with his dick, phone, and internet access that millions of his fellow Americans aren't also doing.... This is part of the new normal, people, just another one of the ways technology is impacting and shaping our lives....

It's obviously not the new normal yet. We're in this halfway position, where millions of Americans are doing something, but America as a culture maintains the staunch opinion that it's completely disgusting and anyone who does it should driven from his job and ostracized unless he goes through a public abasement ritual.

Slate's June Thomas thinks Dan Savage is "bullying" Marcus Bachmann.

June Thomas's Dan Savage is the "it gets better" guy:

[T]he man who launched the “It Gets Better Project,” an effort to stop the bullying of gay teens, was acting like a big bully. As Savage always notes, the kind of smear-the-queer taunts that can cause so much pain to young people aren’t aimed only at kids who are gay, they’re often aimed at boys who don’t live up to some mythical standard of masculinity and girls who just aren’t girly enough. I can only imagine how listeners who happen to have the kind of lisping, effeminate speech and affect that Savage was ridiculing felt upon hearing the attack.

Marcus Bachmann makes money in what I consider to be a reprehensible way: offering “reparative therapy” to “cure” gay people. Judging from the testimony of people who have sought Bachmann’s help, it’s no exaggeration to say that he tries to “pray the gay away.” But that doesn’t justify bullying, and it’s not a good message to send.

I cut Savage some slack. He is a proud gay man who has done amazing work for the community, and I know from having watched the It Gets Better video that he made with his husband, Terry, that he has been bullied and victimized.

Oh, spare me! Thomas's warm, fuzzy Savage is bullshit. Savage is sharp, merciless, and aggressive against homophobia, hypocrisy, and puritanism wherever he thinks he finds it. Based on listening to dozens of his podcasts, I think he bristles at "It Gets Better" as the thing he's famous for, that it irritates him to be reduced to that middle-America-friendly PR campaign.

June Thomas reminds me of people who think John Lennon is all about "Imagine." 

“The mistake that straight people made was imposing the monogamous expectation on men."

Says Dan Savage (in a big NYT Magazine story about him):

“Men were never expected to be monogamous. Men had concubines, mistresses and access to prostitutes, until everybody decided marriage had to be egalitar­ian and fairsey.”

Fairsey? I suppose that's fairs-y — signifying a childish approach to fairness. Am I right? Just trying to understand. Appeals to fairness may sometimes be oversimplified and not really — at some deeper level — fair. He seems to be saying that the female-driven concept of fairness in marriage is a caricature of fairness that favors women, because man's needs are different/greater — as the history of marriage shows. (And yes, I know there are heterosexual couples where the woman has the greater demand for frequency and variety and that Dan Savage is well aware of that.)

In the feminist revolution, rather than extending to women “the same latitude and license and pressure-release valve that men had always enjoyed,” we extended to men the confines women had always endured. “And it’s been a disaster for marriage.”

In their own marriage, Savage and [his husband Terry] Miller practice being what he calls “monogamish,” allowing occasional infidelities, which they are honest about. Miller was initially opposed to the idea. “You assume as a younger person that all relationships are monogamous and between two people, that love means nothing can come between you,” said Miller, who met Savage at a club in 1995, when he was 23 and Savage was 30. “Dan has taught me to be more realistic about that kind of stuff.

“It was four or five years before it came up,” Miller said. “It’s not about having three-ways with somebody or having an open relationship. It is just sort of like, Dan has always said if you have different tastes, you have to be good, giving and game, and if you are not G.G.G. for those tastes, then you have to give your partner the out. It took me a while to get down with that.”

Interesting for the NYT to publish this the week that New York legalized same-sex marriage.

"We hear you, Jay, we hear you: the president's position on marriage equality is evolving."

"That's your buzzword and you're sticking to it. But it's rare to see a politician evolve both ways on an issue like marriage equality. The president was for it, then he was against it, and now the president is presumably evolving back towards his previous position on marriage equality."

Dan Savage is skeptical about evolution.

Dan Savage now says: "Anthony Weiner Might As Well Resign."

Before, he'd defended him, saying:

He didn't do anything with his dick, phone, and internet access that millions of his fellow Americans aren't also doing. He got a few online thrills, he sent out a few pics, he drained his sack sitting in front of his computer. This is part of the new normal, people, just another one of the ways technology is impacting and shaping our lives....

Now here's what I hope the legally married congressman doesn't do: confess to having a problem, blame "sex addiction," check into the Tiger Woods Memorial Sex/Career Rehabilitation Center, resurface a month later Dr. Drew's couch looking contrite, and apologize to the American people for being one of them.

But now:

By checking into rehab—by pretending that it's him, and not the culture, that has a problem with sex—Weiner is sharpening the blade on the guillotine to which he's been dragged.

Why didn't Weiner fight for the right to fool around on line, new-normal-style? By pandering to the old normal and aiding the forces of repression by spreading the lie that the new normal is an illness, he lost Dan Savage.

"Do Not Feed Donuts To Your Obese Children."

"Every time I read something about childhood obesity... this Tim Minchin song starts to play in my head. Yes, it's harsh, brutal even, very nearly bullying. But... um... you gotta admit that there's a grain Cinnabun or two of truth to it."

Says Dan Savage — who needs to say more about what he really thinks about the role of bullying in the process of growing up. He writes about bullying a lot and I think his promotion of this song shows he's not too consistent about it. Is it that it's bad to bully gay kids but good to bully fat kids — because it's good to be gay but bad to be fat? Bullying is a mechanism of social control. Is the mechanism itself wrong, or is the wrong limited to using the mechanism for the wrong end?

By the way, it's Cinnabon — "bon" as in "C'est Si Bon" — and you can be a fan of it on Facebook.



ADDED: The awesomeness of that Jane Morgan video made me pick it over a couple of fabulous alternatives. Check out Eartha Kitt and Louis Armstrong.

Halloween is — or should be — a gay pride parade for straight people.

Or something.

The scourge of bachelorette parties in gay bars.

"The gay men are there because, well, they don't want to be around a lot of women"/"Gay men don't go to gay bars because we don't want to be around women."

Hey, Dan, he said "a lot."

***

Do I need to make an "a lot" tag?

***

Thanks to Peter Hoh for emailing that link.

Gen-Xers for hypocrisy.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Dan [Savage] and I agreed that moderate hypocrisy - especially in marriages - is often the best policy. Momogamy [sic] is very hard for men, straight or gay, and if one partner falters occasionally (and I don't mean regularly), sometimes discretion is perfectly acceptable. You could see [Erica] Jong bridle at the thought of such dishonesty. But I think the post-seventies generation - those of us who grew up while our parents were having a sexual revolution - both appreciate the gains for sexual and emotional freedom, while being a little more aware of their potential hazards. An acceptance of mild hypocrisy as essential social and marital glue is not a revolutionary statement. It's a post-revolutionary one. As is, I'd say, my generation as a whole.

Erica squirms at hypocrisy because she's old? Accepting or rejecting dishonesty is a generational matter? Does this have the ring of truth? I don't think it does. There has always been a range of opinion and tolerance for lies in relationships. And what people squirm at in public or say they accept may not be the same in private. And you don't really know exactly what Jong's nonverbal expression meant. Maybe she was remembering something she was dishonest about. Maybe Dan and Andrew were preening about their "discretion," and it rubbed her the wrong way. I mean, Andrew's preening about it now isn't he?

ADDED: Sullivan's typo "momogamy" just kills me. It's the ultimate in Oedipal.