Salon.com > L.M. Fenton

Why being a mother is the greatest role of my life

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:01:00 +0000

Judging by Salon's front page on Monday, February 28 has been declared Ambivalence About Motherhood Day. One article suggested that women who post pictures of their babies on Facebook are "depressing" and "boring," not to mention sublimating their own identities. This thesis is proven by a straw poll of several of the author's anonymous friends (one of whom claims to only know people who populate a male-dominated Jay Gatsby world of polo shirts and golf games). Another Salon writer took Best Actress Oscar winner Natalie Portman to task for daring to suggest, in her acceptance speech, that her greatest role in life was yet to come: Motherhood. A third article posted late Monday night is a sigh of relief from a writer who is much happier now that she moved out of the family home and lives most of her life apart from her young children because she never wanted them anyway.

Hate crime laws aren’t the answer

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:30:00 +0000

This past weekend, as a precursor to National Coming Out Day, the national press reported on two troubling stories of anti-gay incidents in New York. In the first case, Carl Paladino told a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders that, unlike his Democratic opponent, he had not marched in the Gay Pride parade this year because "that's not the example we should be showing our children." In the text of his prepared speech, he was to have added, "There's nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual." He also accused gays of brainwashing children: "I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't." Paladino will grace November's ballot as the Republican candidate for governor of New York.

Clementi’s suicide: Many are to blame

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:09:00 +0000

Rutgers student Tyler Clementi's anguished jump off the George Washington Bridge capped off a week of widely reported youth suicides attributed to anti-gay harassment and bullying. Clementi's roommate and an acquaintance filmed him having sex with another man, without his knowledge or permission, and live-streamed it to hundreds of other people. When he found out, he jumped off the bridge to his death. Three other teenage boys escaped their pain through hanging, another hanging, and a bullet to the head. None of these acts are equivocal: These young men, at least at the depth of the moment, intended to make a final exit from the world.

Oakland BART shooting verdict won’t address the real issue

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:08:00 +0000

Will justice be served in the case against Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant III, a young father shot in the back as he lay facedown on the BART platform in Oakland, Calif.? Mehserle's defenders claim he mistook his gun for his Taser. His detractors call him an executioner. The plain facts of the case beg the question of why a police offer would feel the need to use a Taser in this situation, let alone a weapon. It also begs the question of why a police officer would intentionally fire a bullet into the back of a prone, defenseless man in front of a large crowd of people. And no matter what the verdict, the troubling reality remains that the shooting of unarmed black men by police officers happens so often that, outside of the courtroom, the Mehserle case is not so much about what happened at the Fruitvale station on New Years Day 2009. It is about the awful consequences that arise when police officers regard every black man as a potential threat.

Gay teens: Your moxie will pay off

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Ceara Sturgis, a teenage lesbian in rural Mississippi, made headlines earlier this year when her bigoted high school principal refused her request to wear traditionally male clothing in her senior yearbook picture. Instead of printing a photo of Ceara in a tuxedo, the school omitted her photo entirely. A CNN reporter recently prompted her to explain how she feels while looking at the page where her picture would have been printed -- had she been biologically male or wearing a dress -- and she could barely speak about it through her tears. I know how she feels.

No-fault divorce? It’s about time

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Oh, New York. Welcome to the 20th Century, where marriage cannot be used as a literal ball and chain by a person unwilling to let go.

What mystifies me the most is the official reaction of Maria Pappas, president of the state chapter of the National Organization of Women, who believes no-fault divorce will cause the sky to fall. Specifically, Pappas believes that "homemakers" are granted leverage with fault-based divorce that they lose when unilateral, or no-fault, divorce is introduced. (It also mystifies me that spouses could still, even in 2010, be forced to stay married to someone who refused to let go.) She also dismisses the support for no-fault divorce from domestic violence attorneys as "the objections of a few" and suggests that, with the proper education, judges would never force victims to stay in such a relationship even in a fault-based only regime.