NY Gays Tie the Knot: What's Lost by Re-defining Marriage

When 84-year-old Connie Kopelov was wheel-chaired up to the Manhattan City Clerk Sunday for the first legal gay marriage in the state of New York (to Phyllis Siegel, 76), it was a touching scene of two elderly women publicly cementing their 23-year-long love.  Who could deny these ladies a recognized connection?

Why shouldn't Alvin Woods, 27, and Antonio Lopez, 25, enjoy the public revelation of their tattooed wedding rings at their legal linkage?  For these and the other happy couples newly wed in New York, to headlines celebrating the ability of same-sex partners to become "like everyone else," it's a day to proclaim love.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

It's true that people who believe that God gave us His commandments in the Bible--and that God is not to be dissed--won't accept two of the same gender as married.  History, too, would contra-indicate that two of the same sex qualify as spouses.  Dictionaries, at least until very recently, defined "marry" like mine does: "1. to join as husband and wife; unite in wedlock, 2. to join a man to a woman as her husband, or a a woman to a man as his wife... (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language)"

But why not just change things?  History is no argument to continue an archaic institution; civilization is the story of improvement--for example, women now fulfll their potentials in far more than motherhood or as support for their men (or librarians, teachers, nurses and secretaries, the only four professions expected for women as recently as the mid-1960s).  Those who want to hold by the Bible's dictates don't have to participate in gay marriages, and dictionaries are easily re-written.

Certainly that's what's coming.

But in declaring the union of two men or women as exactly the same as the marriage of opposite genders, we lose an important distinction that in other areas we wish to preserve: male and female.  With gay marriage legally sanctioned, we are to believe that sex between two lesbians has the same consequence for society as sex between a man and woman. Male plus male? Male plus female? Female plus female?  It's all the same in marriage, under New York law.

Here's the hitch: In elevating gay relationships to be equivalent to straight marriages, we proclaim that it is no longer worth society's endorsement for a child to be raised by his or her biological parents. We no longer assert that our nation is best served when children live with their natural mothers and fathers, together.

Research on outcomes for children without that benefit suggest otherwise. Children raised by single parents, or in combined families, or by gay couples can certainly emerge healthy. However, in no gay family could a child be raised by both biological parents.  Kids learn different things from a mother and a father.  And have least complications when that mother and father are their own.

For that reason, the nation has a stake in promoting married biological families.  "Every major social pathology that can trouble an American child happens more often when his or her parents are not joined by marriage," writes Maggie Gallagher in The Meaning of Marriage (2006), "more poverty, dependency, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental illness, infant mortality, physical illness, education failure, high school dropouts, sexually transmitted diseases, and early unwed childbearing, and later on, divorce."

When we re-define marriage as the union of any two people who love each other, we change the focus from our nation's future to warm touchy-feelies of love, in the present.  We lose a long-term perspective, substituting a carpe diem, emotional priority.

As a nation, we need children to grow up with optimized chances to succeed, earn money, and create further happy families.  We like it when gay citizens can live with those they love, and feel respected.  But that's not the government's business or job--let religious officials, friends and family declare these unions permanent and appreciated.  Don't make these people go through expensive public courts to dissolve them when they fail, since their existence, while adding to personal satisfaction, contributes little to national goals that governments control.

Sari Kessler and Erika Karp were married 12 years ago in their synagogue by their rabbi. But that wasn't enough for them, despite having three daughters, ages 9, 6 and 3.  "People need to know we're just like everyone else," Sari Kessler said in explanation for why she is "absolutely elated" to gain legal married status. "Our families are just as valued and important and special as any other family in the world,'' affirmed her bride.

But actually, with all due respect, gay families may be important and special and valued--but not as much by a society with a need to encourage an ideal.  Yet officially, in the six states where gay marriage is legal, they are now just as ideal as marriages with the potential to provide children both a biological mother and father.

And that's what we've lost. We've lost the ability to say, "we have evidence that this is the preferred way to do it; this way, with both a mother and father raising their biological children, provides something our society values more because it offers the best chance to produce children that will turn out whole, well-adjusted and ready to emulate mothers and fathers they've had loving them and each other."

Men and women are not interchangeable.  All the brain research confirms that the genders have fundamental, irreducibile differences that complement each other.  The 1.4% of people who are homosexual deserve to spend their lives with whomever they please.  But we do ourselves and our children a disservice to suggest that the unions they form are the same as heterosexual marriages.

Distinctions serve a purpose, especially when based on replicated research--men and women are different, and the bond they form is different from the bond formed by two of the same gender.  But we're coming to a time when legally, we can know it and even demonstrate it but can't live it.  Now that gay marriages are becoming numerous enough to warrant widespread research and analysis, we'll soon have data, and from what studies I've seen so far, I suspect academics will confirm that yes, marriages of, say, lesbians are dfferent from, say, marriages of gay men. When we must deny reality, that will surely be a big loss.

Don't Diss JC Penney's

These are the mannequins in the window of the brand-new JC Penney store in Midtown Manhattan. Look at them.

Here's what the New York Times' "critical shopper," Cintra Wilson, says about them in her Thursday Styles piece of a few days ago: Penney's "has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It's like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of 'Roseanne.'"

In what I consider the most needlessly cruel "review" of a retail store ever, Ms. Wilson finds two dozen ways to insult the bedrock American institution and its intrusion into the home of "the stress-thin, morbidly workaholic, Pilates-tortured Manhattan ectomorph." God forbid.

Now, I feel sorry for JC Penney's. Not just because of the mean comments, but because it's trying so hard to stay afloat. As a capitalist, I realize that only businesses that can appeal to customers and make a profit deserve to survive. But Penney's decided to take the bold move and open a Midtown store, and snobby urbanites who think the millions of customers grateful for a JC Penney's in their disparate communities are worthless ought to just button up long enough to see if the venture can succeed on its own terms.

Admittedly, my middle daughter won't even peruse the sale racks in our local JC Penney's; its reputation is that low. But truly, she's missing something. The aggressive sales ads and coupons and, frankly, reasonable prices, have lured me in often. Nowhere are there cheaper and better flat shoes that are actually cute. And they have wardrobe basics like t-shirts and underwear and even suits that can be so well-priced that I wonder how the items can be made and still produce profit.

If you're catty, and you're very fashion-conscious, and New York centric, you may just read the NYT screed and giggle. Yes, there are some nuggets that are true about JC Penney's frumpy image ("Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops without even bothering to update its ancient Helvetica Light Logo...?"), and its attempts to offer mild style at low cost ("A good 96 percent of the Penney's inventory is made of Polyester.") but some of us don't want to waste wads of money on ephemeral purchases and actually appreciate a store where there are few pretenses.

And I don't think the mannequins are fat at all.

OK, it's true, you can't find very many size 2 outfits there (ok again, I am a size 2) but I love JC Penney's, and I love wandering down to the napkin rings and table settings, always on sale, and the lingerie where fun print bras can be found for $10. I use their luggage. I like their bedding. And my beloved optometrist has his office in Penney's basement.

So there. You take Manhattan. I'll take JC Penney.

New York Foray a Panoply of Experiences

Just back from the Big Apple after a three-day jaunt with my sorority daughter and friend for her spring break. Cold weather doesn't daunt the bustle or noise or commotion, as cab horns, sirens, hawkers, jackrabbit-starting autos and cell-phone yellers all compete to be heard.

It was tough to find a hotel, but after dueling between websites, Travelocity found us a place in the San Carlos Hotel that Orbitz, Kayak, Travelzoo and Expedia all claimed was full. A red-eye flight left the three of us zombie-esque upon our 10 am arrival, but a kindly desk clerk named Quron took pity and upgraded us to a one-bedroom suite with immediate entry. I plan to commend him.

Our first day in The City was frigid but sunny and we took the opportunity to stroll with my NY daughter in Central Park. The benches in the sunshine were lined with bundled visitors, faces turned upward as ours were. Next to us was a young couple taking their 8-day-old baby girl, Mia, outdoors for the first time. Alice in Wonderland was alive with climbers; the characaturist sat sketching with a crowd of approving onlookers.

Though my school-break daughter was there for serious shopping, my secret agenda was to gain a peek at the life of my NY college senior. The biggest thrill for me was being surrounded by the lithe voices of six young women singing choral rounds in rehearsal under the sweet-voiced director whose lilting instruction was as melodious as the harmonies I heard. That a child of mine could reach notes as distantly ethereal as the far-octave pitch she achieved was in itself worth the plane flight.

Also leaving me flying was the chance to observe a dress rehearsal of her school play, for which she ultimately switched her Northwestern normality for a thick Brooklyn accent. I happened to luck into also hearing the presentation of a veteran Broadway actor who had played for years in the same comedy my daughter helped stage; his insights into the struggles of actors just to survive were as startling as they were entertaining. Needless to say, throughout all my adventures, my paparazzi camera recorded it all.

The days of shopping, though, did have their amusements. Walking from 50th Street all the way south down Broadway to Canal Street gave me a slice of activity as diagonal as the avenue's slant. Macy's Flower Show was a breathtaking display of real blooms of brilliant hues stuffed in long troughs above all the merchandise, down the centers of aisles and forming astounding stands of creative floor-to-ceiling displays. If my inveterate shoppers hadn't rushed me on, I would have cooed over every blossom.

Canal Street, formerly for ferreting fabulous fakes, now brought every hushed mutter of "Coach?" the reply, "No more Coach," or, "No Coach, Police." The stalls just north of Canal on Broadway that once housed colorful Guatamalan boiled wool purses, rainbow-striped scarves, t-shirts and sunglasses were tarped-over and surrounded by a chain-link fence. One building that previously offered obvious knock-offs in front but more convincing inventory behind rear false walls showed merely a plywood facade. I doubt the crack-down on counterfeiters has eliminated them; they've probably moved into new digs likely accessible with persistent surreptitious inquiries, though not to three ladies respectful of the law.

We left on a quest for the store "Joyce Leslie" (20 University Pl. between 8th and 9th Streets in Greenwich Village) in which the fashionista duo ultimately spent nearly four hours and a couple hundred dollars--while I escaped after a cursory and overwhelmed perusal. Racks of styles are arranged by color, the lemon yellow contrasted with black; the kelly green interwoven with white, jammed in a two-story labyrinth replete with dead-end cubbies and random rounders.

I just don't need more clothes. My closet is stuffed already with hand-me-ups, shirts, denim skirts, sweaters, tank-tops cast off by my youthful flaw-finders after a season or an unsatisfactory wash. I can't bear to discard something that could be worn; something I could combine with this or update with that or wear layered with the other--that I paid for! In most cases, my girls' pleas or requests or cajoles to purchase each of the items still echoes in my brain. I also too-clearly recall my own college days, when, (rather than walking both ways to class through snow drifts) I was forced by poverty (as well as lack of interest) to wear the same pair of jeans every day with one of my four tops (laundered every other Friday). This frugality has led me to jam my closet with unwearables impossible to abandon, denying some African citizens of desperately needed too-short tops and shrunken hip-huggers that would have been shipped their way jumbled in ton-sized blocks.

New York at this point seems a fantasy, a faraway hive of bumble bees buzzing and rushing and honking seriously in their separate world. The kosher restaurants were wonderful (though expensive; Gusto Va Mare's heavenly Peanut Butter Pie is pictured), the sights stimulating, the contact with my NY daughter exhilerating, but I'm glad to be back home, even under book deadline, even with an every-weather weekend of snow, sleet, hail, rain, sunshine and overcast. Time to get back to work and stop procrastinating by basking in a dream.

Mugging a 101-year-old with a Walker riles New Yorkers

Having just returned last week from a jaunt from the left to the right coast, my view of New Yorkers has been refreshed. Walking the streets of mid-town Manhattan, I remembered why the City earned its reputation. Graffitti was abundant. Trash was piled up several feet high in garbage bags along the curbs. The lovely white snow that first greeted our family on Sunday turned by Monday into dirty slush, and as I noted in my previous blog, the incessant dripping from above as I walked down the street left my hair wet. The jovial friendliness of downtown Seattle was replaced by hurrying crowds who couldn't pause to say "excuse me" when they bumped and shoved and dashed past.

In other words, though New Yorkers can be loving and kind on an individual basis, as a group, in public, they're pretty tough. And rude. And unfriendly. Sometimes even menacing.

But even so, there IS a point beyond which bad behavior will not be tolerated. I just watched, on You Tube, the video of the mugger smacking the head of 101-year-old Rose Morat, who had been leaning on her walker leaving her Queens apartment building to go to church. I saw her speaking to a reporter afterward, face black and blue, expressing her pity for the criminal--who knocked her over, and her walker as well, and absconded with her purse containing $33.

Also in the news report was an interview with the 85-year-old woman, Solange Elizee, that this same moron attacked later in the day. She also expressed shock at the behavior of her attacker--who got $32 and her wedding ring. This time the perpetrator entered an elevator with the woman, exited a floor before her, and ran upstairs to bash her in the head as she emerged.

News of these crimes has brought out the sense of justice in New Yorkers, who have reacted fiercely--raising a reward of more than $18,000. An Associated Press article about the incidents quoted Joe Sarju, 59 in his feelings about the criminal: "I could hold him and let the woman beat him up," he offered. "I'd love to beat him, but then they would lock me up."

OK, I did chuckle reading that end part--Mr. Sarju's anger goes only so far. But what is heartening to me is New Yorkers' unequivocal reaction. To mug anyone is bad--intolerable--but to victimize the helpless is unforgivable.

My hope here is that indignation over the attacks on these feisty senior citizens will mobilize New Yorkers--and anyone else who is outraged--to permanently care a bit more for the welfare of his or her neighbors. And I also hope that the attacker is quickly caught, and that he receives the greatest penalty the law allows.

And to my friends who live in Queens--I know you'll be there to escort little old ladies with walkers wherever they need to go.

Stern College's play, "Made Up:" An Off-Broadway Triumph

New York, the city that never sleeps, offered for three nights last week a marquis featuring my daughter--my beautiful bachorah-- starring in her college play. Yes, that's STARRING, not only holding the lead part, but lighting up the stage with her presence, delivering the most difficult of lines--mostly sentence fragments--with personality that developed with her character's ascent.

I'll flip over all the cards, as my husband is wont to say, in an archaic reference to the beloved TV show, "What's My Line:" The play was produced by Stern College, and playwright Chai Hecht created a bizarre plot in which my daughter, playing Nattie Barton, a reticent 19-year-old makeup girl for a TV talk show, becomes the leader of a cult that, via her charisma, grows to hundreds of thousands of followers. The most virulent of these insist she's the Messiah, and aim to prove it by shooting her--to demonstrate her immortality. Unfortunately, Natty was preceeded by several "false Messiahs" who resigned their posts by proving their own unworthiness--first by killing another and then taking their own lives.

But never mind that, the jerky bits of sentences expressing pregnant thoughts bumps the audience along (early on, one false Messiah does express exasperation with the incomplete and frustrating half-starts in Nattie's speech pattern). And ultimately, there's a scary climax that, over the three days' performances, becomes somewhat comprehensible.
I did view every performance offered. Had to. I had a bit part in the play.
My part was, appropriately enough, an audience member for a talk show who proffers cult-leader and guest Natty an admiring question: "How do you keep your figure?" This ponderous query was preceded with its own jerky repartee that was the devil to memorize, adding to my admiration for the eight women who so seamlessly interrupted and interjected and paused and pondered their way through the plot. Delivering sensible, complete sentences in a logical order is difficult enough, but to keep straight seemingly unrelated fragments, the intelligence requirement elevates exponentially.

All in all, participating in and watching the three evenings' entertainment, expertly directed by professional Reuven Russell, was more fun than I could have anticipated. The Schottenstein Cultural Center was pretty darn close to Broadway, and gave the feel of a "real" off-Broadway production, and watching my daughter command the stage was a life-peak.
And during the days? Let's just say that cheapo clothes emporiums on Broadway anywhere south of 24th street probably saw my middle daughter's thrilled and delighted face as she sifted through racks of trendy styles, mother (me) in tow. The one store I can personally recommend to any female who enjoys a staggering array of fabulously-priced costume jewelry is Accessories Palace, on Broadway near 32nd Street. I strolled the aisles there, tray of bargains in hand, gleeful grin and delighted words evident, until daughters were nagging me to go.

And then, there was the kosher food. Pizza--we in the northwest corner of the country are woefully without freshly-made kosher pizza, and at Circa and Jerusalem 2, we were able to replenish our pizza-starved appetites on thick crusted or exotica-topped choices. To live in New York and be Jewish is to drink of grease and goodness. Costs a bundle, but ummm, it's yummy.

So, as promised, that's the summary of my New York getaway. Oh, I could have mentioned our first day there, a Sunday, when our entire family enjoyed the Morgan Library (breathtaking medieval art) and a harbor boat tour to get up-close-and-personal with Lady Liberty. I could have saluted the friends we got to schmooze with (two girlfriends of my daughter's even joined us for a slumber party) and waxed eloquent about the street life and the ankle-deep snow we encountered (which soon became endless dripping from above that, with steadfast aim, plopped on head and even lip). But no, the trip's centerpiece was the play, "Made Up," and that was one production eminently worth traversing flyover country for.