Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
My wife and I went to Har Mar last weekend, to walk the mall. Yes, I am a mall-walker. Hey, it’s the only exercise she can get me to do, so it’s better than nothing.
An older man was sitting on a bench, people-watching. We recognized him as a guy who retired from my wife’s workplace last year. Effeminate mannerisms, trim physique, perfect hair: everyone assumed he was gay but so what, he’s a nice guy and he works hard. He never married, lived at home so he could care for his Mom until she died, and now he sits in the mall, alone.
The best argument the gay rights crowd advanced for normalizing their lifestyle was that everyone deserves to grow old with someone they love. I felt sad for him as my wife and I walked away, holding hands.
Of course, I recognize that “grow old with the one you love” is a slippery slope. There’s no reason “the one you love” must be limited. As an intellectual argument, it’s just as valid when applied to child brides, first cousins, man-boy love and probably other arrangements I’m too squeamish to wonder about. I accept that the fundamental organizational unit for any long-term stable society must be the nuclear family, lest it collapse in an orgy of self-indulgence. I’m not certain whether the next big push to expand marriage come from Muslims in plural marriages or feminists living alone with their cats; I am certain the next big push is coming.
But I still feel sorry for that man, sitting in the mall, alone.
If I were an ultra-orthodox Mormon, my ears would be perking up these days.
I thought the next trendy cause would be polygamy, but it turns it is non-gender. You are whatever you think you are that morning. Use whatever bathroom you want. There is no such thing as male and female.
Best thing I have read about human sexuality in a long time:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/against-heterosexuality
The author says that heterosexuals and homosexuals are both inventions of 19th century rationalists.
What’s love got to do with it? Loneliness afflicts the single, widowed and divorced as well as the married (and is certainly no respecter of sexual orientation). “Joe Doakes” is lucky indeed if he has not experienced it. Perhaps then he would have felt compassion instead of pity toward the old man.