The case against matrimony
BY LARISSA PHILLIPS
(11/18/99)

How does Larissa Phillips think that by not getting married her child (or children) will be protected from the trauma of losing a live-in parent? Most parents, married or not, are intensely committed to their children for the long term. But children need their parents to be committed to each other in the same way. And marriage is nothing if not a long-term, intense commitment.

Marriage is a tough gig. So is being a child in a family where adults just can't seem to stay committed to their spouses.

-- Anne Lewis

Larissa Phillips concludes her rant against her boomer parents' narcissism by blaming them for the rise in divorce. Actually, the rise in the divorce rate in the United States occurred in the 1940s, not the 1970s. The World War II generation, not the boomers, were the first to break their marriage vows on a wide-scale basis. The boomers were just following their parents' example.

Secondly, the rate of divorce, like the rate of marriage, is down. Divorced peaked in the early 1980s and has slowly, steadily declined. Many boomers, having learned how dreadfully painful divorce was the first time, have worked hard to avoid being repeat offenders.

Don't get me wrong: The boomers have plenty to be held accountable for in screwing up the social fabric. They have, in their incompetence, created blissfully ignorant creatures like Phillips. If she has a child and a mortgage and is living with the father of the child, she is, in the state of New York, a common-law wife -- whether she likes it or not. In the eyes of the state, she already are married.

-- Carl Steidtmann
New York

Larissa Phillips thinks marriage is outdated and passi. She should try being a divorce attorney. Do you know what I've seen in the last 10 years? Marriage, even if it ends in divorce, still protects women to a certain extent. It allows the less financially secure spouse, usually the woman, to put in a claim for property division, spousal support and child support upon the relationship. If Phillips has never been married, she will lose many legal rights that married people now enjoy. If the father of her child dies and he hasn't made up a will, guess who gets the property through intestate succession? It won't be her. It may not even be their child if they've never bothered to establish paternity. I hope that distant cousin of her boyfriend enjoys her boyfriend's interest in their house after the boyfriend "kicks off."

Obviously, I'm being a little flippant -- but like it or not, Phillips is losing out and is causing her child to lose out on some legal protections by not tying the knot.

-- Karen Moskowitz
Little Rock, Ark.

I am a 28-year-old from a "broken home." I view the institution of marriage with deep reservations, and currently am too emotionally exhausted to even date. I think that Phillips' observation that the boomers taught by example is valid; I also don't think it's the whole story.

For those of us who went through our parents' divorce, there is reluctance to go through that ourselves. But from a generational viewpoint, I think we really don't know what marriage is really for. Commitment is not the problem; most of us want long-lasting relationships. But we also know the reality: Not all relationships are long-lasting and there are no absolutes. I think my generation does not view marriage as something that either establishes such a bond, or promises that such a bond will hold. So the real question is, "What does the institute of marriage do for us?" Until we redirect the premise of those time-honored vows, there will continue to be grave doubts about the usefulness of blowing thousands of dollars on a ceremony that just doesn't seem to buy what it used to.

-- Matthew Williams

Though some will undoubtedly be alarmed by Larissa Phillips' explanation for America's falling marriage rates, she represents over 11 million of us who live with unmarried partners in the United States today. Some unmarried couples will get married eventually. Some are unable to marry their partners (same-sex marriage, for instance, is illegal in every state in the country). And others, like Phillips and myself, choose not to marry because we are troubled by an institution with a failure rate as high as marriage's, and because of a wide variety of other political, religious, philosophical, and financial reasons.

Despite our considerable numbers, people in unmarried relationships rarely see ourselves as a community with common interests and experiences. Tired of having our fulfilling relationships attacked by outsiders' moral stigmas, religious judgments, flawed social science research and institutionalized penalties and discrimination, last year we decided to do something about it. Our national organization, the Alternatives to Marriage Project is working to create space for people like Phillips to connect -- and eventually to earn respect and support for our relationships and families.

-- Dorian Solot
Boston

Whither marriage?
(11/15/99)

I have been extremely disappointed with the "Whither Marriage" series. I was expecting an in-depth look at marriage, with perhaps demographic information on how marriage is changing in our culture; interviews with people about the challenges and joys of marriage; conversations on how to make marriage work; maybe something on the growing movement to legalize same-sex marriages. (A topic dear to my queer little heart.)

Instead -- with the exception of "A Cooler Head Prevails" -- the articles have all been shallow, flippant and predominately concerned with sex, infidelity and dysfunction. And the right-wingers think they need to protect the institution of marriage from people like me? It needs more protection from the cynical attitude of people like you.

-- Eris Weaver
San Rafael, Calif.

Hillary, Naomi, Susan and Rush. Sheesh!
BY CAMILLE PAGLIA
(11/17/99)

Camille Paglia glibly accepts the analogy from a reader that compares the Virgin Mary piece in the "Sensation" exhibit to a seder plate made of swastikas. Are we to take it then that elephant dung is the preferred symbol of a movement that depicts Catholics as less than human and which celebrates a genocidal murder of millions of Catholics that took place only two generations ago? Perhaps it's true that some explanation is in order for the "Sensation" exhibit, but elephant dung is clearly not to Catholics what swastikas are to Jews. Paglia's obliviousness to this obvious fact shows that she is no longer any different than those whom she criticizes when it comes to embracing any simplistic argument that's available in order to justify her pet pronouncements.

-- David Lichtenberg

The supposedly anti-Catholic "Dung Madonna" was created by a Catholic artist, not by the collector who owns it or the museum which displayed it. The remarks about the near impossibility of a "Seder plate made of swastikas" being shown at a publicly funded museum are a red herring for a very simple reason, what one might call the "N-word principle": Just as African-Americans are free to use the N-word but whites are not, for obvious reasons, criticism from within the group is tolerated while criticism from outside the group is resisted. If such a Seder plate were created by a Jew, it would be disturbing in the extreme, but it would inevitably lead to the kind of discussion that it was intended to provoke. If it were created by a Catholic, however, it would inevitably lead to accusations of anti-Semitism, which would hardly be surprising. In creating his art, Chris Ofili, as a Catholic, had something to say about his Catholicism, regardless of how puerile some people may feel it to be. His art is not the fault of the Jews.

This all boils down to the question of what people believe the purpose of art should be. Is it something pretty to hang on walls or is it a medium for challenging people intellectually and provoking discussion about important topics? It is clear where Paglia stands on this -- a surprising position for someone who prides herself on skewering sacred cows. Paglia rejoices over dead sacred cows only as long as they are someone else's cows.

-- Earl Hartman

No regrets
BY ANNA SORELLI
(11/17/99)

Like the author, I searched the Net after the end of my affair to find an article that spoke to my particular situation. Like Sorelli, I found many stories aimed at adultery-plagued couples trying to repair their broken marriages to which I could not fully relate. I, too, struggled with my "lack of guilt" since the breakup of my affair last summer. Society says I should feel awful, but I don't. I, too, prayed for my lover's life: not so much for him to live, but for him to live happily. I, too, passed many hours alone or at work, afraid to return to the house full of people and the loneliness I felt there.

Like the author of this article, I thank my former lover for giving "me back my life when I didn't even know I'd lost it."

-- Lynn Townshend

I've been noticing lately how so many religiously inclined people claim to have no problem with cheating on their spouses. Some even use their religion to justify their deception: "In fact, [my religious faith] grew stronger, reinforced by what I saw as a real-life demonstration of the tenet that Jesus loves the sinner more." Now I'm not very religious at all, nor do I believe that monogamy is necessarily desirable or realistic for most people, but I do believe in moral accountability. Jesus may love your lying, cheating soul more because of your indiscretions, but in the immediate world of emotions and consequence, you're still a scumbag. And all the Bible-thumping in the world won't change what you've done to someone who trusted you.

-- Bryan Keller
New York

Sympathy for the Devil
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ
(11/18/99)

The real tragedy is that Donna Minkowitz has to defend her position. The people who criticize her empathic take on outrageous situations are not liberals, but radical conservatives with different causes. People don't want to believe that normal people -- like themselves -- can become what they consider "monsters." It's so much better to assume that there is a wrongness about these criminals. It makes us feel safe. After all, we could never do that -- right?

-- Bill Stiteler Jr.

What an outrage to suggest that "we all have something in common with Matthew Shepard's killers." Honey, I have nothing in common with the brutal, sadistic thugs who murdered Shepard. Maybe Donna Minkowitz does! I find Minkowitz's "method acting" form of journalism utterly repulsive.

-- Tom Gordon
New York

Playing God
BY KRISTI COALE
(11/17/99)

What the author blithely overlooked was the actual day-to-day life experience of families where there are disabilities. As a social worker in District of Columbia a few years ago I had a mother of three children, the youngest son autistic, as a client; she fantasized about getting on a bus and leaving home. A neighbor's son requires round-the-clock nursing; his father and mother have changed careers so that they can work out of the home.

It's time we stopped romanticizing parenthood. In a world with too many people, it's great when people choose not to reproduce but instead open their lives to others' children.

-- Vickie Leonard

Why does everyone seem so surprised and appalled by the drastic steps some people take to create a more advantaged baby? Everyone knows that beautiful, intelligent people get further in life (cruel but true). For a parent to want to give these advantages to a child seems a natural reaction. We should be more shocked by the fact that our society perpetuates the idea that if you're not attractive, intelligent and athletic, you're not going to be happy. If there wasn't such a value placed on these birth-given traits (rather than ones achieved though hard work) parents would wouldn't go to such extreme measures to try to give them to their children.

-- Amy Crosby

Kristi Coale misses one key point: the connection between such invasive and manipulative pseudo-science and fascism. During the early part of the 20th century, concern about the "racial health" of society was by no means limited to America. Our German counterparts were also hot on the trail of the perfect human specimen, and their conclusions continue to haunt us. One look at the article's link -- to a bizarre, cold-blooded site that auctions off genetic material from supermodels -- provides a vulgar glimpse into our Brave New World. Despite claims of an equal-opportunity egg- and sperm-donor policy, the stud animals are all -- you guessed it -- lily white.

Genetic manipulation represents the last gasp of the poisonous, ethically bankrupt farce known as Western medicine. The tiny dreams of tiny men envision a fluorescent-lit dystopia in which neither warts, wrinkles nor sagging tits need ever remind us of who we actually are -- human. When we steel our hearts to that unpleasant reality is when we truly attain immortality.

-- Robert Arellano

Brave new world or future shock?
BY JON BOWEN
(11/17/99)

Jon Bowen writes: "Diabetics will wear sensors under their skin to monitor glucose levels, with an internal reservoir dosing out insulin when the levels drop." In that case, I predict that there will be a lot of dead diabetics; when blood glucose drops, the last thing you want is more insulin! Low blood sugar is caused by an excess of circulating insulin, and the usual treatment is to eat some sugar, fast. The fundamental symptom of diabetes is high blood sugar, and the reason that diabetics suffer from episodes of low blood sugar is that treatments for high blood sugar (insulin and oral medications) are difficult to control precisely and aren't as flexible as the body's own feedback system.

I looked up the BMJ editorial that apparently inspired this sentence of Bowen's article. It opens by describing a woman using what basically amounts to a surgically implanted insulin pump paired with a continuous blood glucose sensor in some sort of automatic feedback loop. This idea is nothing particularly new -- it's an extrapolation of diabetes-management technologies that exist or are in development now. But when the author of the editorial says that this futuristic technology is "almost here," he probably means that he guesses that it may be perfected within the next 25 years. For one thing, testing such a system is likely to be a long, tortuous process. I'm not eager to be an "early adopter" of a technology when a bug in the software could easily kill me.

Bowen wonders whether "these new technologies will ... strip away some of the mystery of living day to day in the sway of the natural world." For some of us, this is already a moot point -- there's nothing particularly "natural" about giving yourself five injections every day. For that matter, most people's everyday, normal activities, from wearing clothes to eating creme brulee, aren't "natural" in any meaningful sense. No human beings, even the most "primitive" hunter-gatherers, live in a state of nature unmodified by culture or technology.

These issues may also be moot because doctors' and medical researchers' predictions about the pace of developing technology are often overly optimistic. For several decades, researchers have been predicting a cure for diabetes "in five years." I'm not holding my breath.

-- Janet Lafler

"Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials" by Wendy Kaminer
BY ANDREW O'HEHIR
(11/17/99)

Andrew O'Hehir seems to praise Wendy Kaminer for her ability to write sagely yet with humility of American susceptibility to superstition and the accompanying hypocritical behavior of our leaders and others who ought to know, and act, better. Then, with New Age-ish peeve, he takes it all back. "Maybe" he concludes, "it's because Kaminer is completely immune to the fluid, almost erotic allure of religious or magical thinking that she has no real feeling for it. But absent such fundamental sympathy, her book feels unhappily reminiscent of a civics lecture: For all the excellent points it makes, it's earnest, self-righteous and easy to ignore."

What is this? Her salient critique discounted because she withholds soft and fuzzy "understanding" from the criticized? Why need she be "sympathetic" with the believe-anything boobies and religious non-rationals who persist in foisting a murderous set of magical beliefs on each succeeding generation? And since when is dry analysis less valid simply because it disdains such mushiness?

Perhaps O'Hehir is one of those who fears to cut his undoubted intellectual capacity and potential loose from magic-based belief systems because he has been persuaded that without a comfortably father-like God, mystically powerful faeries, or some handy alien substitute, there will be no "soul," no beauty of spirit or mystery. Gosh. We might have to grow up, see the magnificent, awe-inspiring, truly beautiful universe for the stunning question mark it is, instead of making up childish stories about what it isn't. We might actually find a compelling need to make a religion that celebrates life instead of condemning most of it to ignorance, repression or bland, banal platitudes. We might actually become intellectually and morally responsible, instead of hiding our ethical laziness behind some all-excusing, all-explaining package of magical notions, "erotically alluring" or not.

-- David Yancey

O'Hehir is quite right in calling Kaminer's book "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials" sanctimonious and elitist. Kaminer certainly has a point about public displays of piety, especially with the current presidential candidates vying with each other to be religious and righteous. However -- from my perspective as a pagan -- most of "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials" bogs down in elitism and left-brain excess. I wonder if Kaminer is one of those curmudgeons who critiques every TV show and movie she sees for "realism."

Not all spirituality is mindless fluff; one couldn't accuse the Dalai Lama, St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa of being lightweights. Similarly, scientists can be every bit as corrupt, power-hungry and capable of deceit as anyone else; Robert Anton Wilson's "The New Inquisition" explored this in depth.

-- Crystal Di'Anno
Oakland, Calif.