Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
My wife and I went to Har Mar last weekend, to walk the mall. Yes, I am a mall-walker. Hey, it\u2019s the only exercise she can get me to do, so it\u2019s better than nothing.<\/p>\n
An older man was sitting on a bench, people-watching. We recognized him as a guy who retired from my wife\u2019s workplace last year. Effeminate mannerisms, trim physique, perfect hair: everyone assumed he was gay but so what, he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Of course, I recognize that \u201cgrow old with the one you love\u201d is a slippery slope. There\u2019s no reason \u201cthe one you love\u201d must be limited. As an intellectual argument, it\u2019s just as valid when applied to child brides, first cousins, man-boy love and probably other arrangements I\u2019m 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\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
But I still feel sorry for that man, sitting in the mall, alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If I were an ultra-orthodox Mormon, my ears would be perking up these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2019s the only exercise she can get me to do, so it\u2019s better than nothing. An older man was sitting on a bench, people-watching. We recognized him as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42032,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42030\/revisions\/42032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}