Love, the strongest and deep­est ele­ment in all life, the har­bin­ger of hope, of joy, of ecsta­sy; love, the defi­er of all laws, of all con­ven­tions; love, the freest, the most pow­er­ful mold­er of human des­tiny; how can such an all-com­pelling force be syn­ony­mous with that poor lit­tle State and Church-begot­ten weed, mar­riage?

Free love? As if love is any­thing but free! Man has bought brains, but all the mil­lions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has sub­dued bod­ies, but all the pow­er on earth has been unable to sub­due love. Man has con­quered whole nations, but all his armies could not con­quer love. Man has chained and fet­tered the spir­it, but he has been utter­ly help­less before love. High on a throne, with all the splen­dor and pomp his gold can com­mand, man is yet poor and des­o­late, if love pass­es him by. And if it stays, the poor­est hov­el is radi­ant with warmth, with life and col­or. Thus love has the mag­ic pow­er to make of a beg­gar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no oth­er atmos­phere.

Emma Gold­man, “Mar­riage and Love,” Anar­chism and Oth­er Essays (1911)

From
Gay Unions Shed Light on Gen­der in Mar­riage

A grow­ing body of evi­dence shows that same-sex cou­ples have a great deal to teach every­one else about mar­riage and rela­tion­ships. Most stud­ies show sur­pris­ing­ly few dif­fer­ences between com­mit­ted gay cou­ples and com­mit­ted straight cou­ples, but the dif­fer­ences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of con­flicts that can endan­ger het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships.

The find­ings offer hope that some of the most vex­ing prob­lems are not nec­es­sar­i­ly entrenched in deep-root­ed bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the prob­lems can be solved.

One of the things the arti­cle points out is some­thing I’ve def­i­nite­ly noticed, that how peo­ple han­dle resolve con­flicts is far more impor­tant than how often they expe­ri­ence con­flict.

One well-known study used math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing to deci­pher the inter­ac­tions between com­mit­ted gay cou­ples. The results, pub­lished in two 2003 arti­cles in The Jour­nal of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, showed that when same-sex cou­ples argued, they tend­ed to fight more fair­ly than het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, mak­ing few­er ver­bal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the con­fronta­tion.

Con­trol­ling and hos­tile emo­tion­al tac­tics, like bel­liger­ence and dom­i­neer­ing, were less com­mon among gay cou­ples.

For my Sam

A Mar­riage
You are hold­ing up a ceil­ing
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, ter­ri­bly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceil­ing
will soon col­lapse.

But then,
unex­pect­ed­ly,
some­thing won­der­ful hap­pens:
Some­one,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arm up
to the ceil­ing beside you.

So you final­ly get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flow­ing back
to your fin­gers and arms.
And when your part­ner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
with­out the house falling.

From Against Romance: Poems by Michael Blu­men­thal, Pen­guin Books, 1988

I had an entry almost com­plete­ly writ­ten, and it was good. Then I hit some­thing bad­ly with my numb hand, and my brows­er backed up a page. Now the entry is all gone. Yes, I should have saved some­time while writ­ing, but I was on a roll.

So you’ll have to set­tle for know­ing that I spent the day recov­er­ing from yes­ter­day but my body is still pis­sy at me. Oth­er­wise, I think the ACLU is very con­fused about what “pub­lic” means. Accord­ing to the APA, I am not myth­i­cal (which is a big relief), and researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego say that same sex rela­tion­ships may be health­i­er than oppo­site sex cou­plings. Final­ly, the Queen is firm­ly “low­er­ing the ‘chav’ fac­tor” at Roy­al Ascot, which is sure to make the world a far safer place. Or some­thing.

Ok — if het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riage is so sacred because it takes a man and a woman to pro­cre­ate, those het cou­ples had best be prov­ing that’s why they’re mar­ried, right?

Or at least, that’s the log­ic behind a bal­lot mea­sure pro­posed in Wash­ing­ton state.

Pro­po­nents of same-sex mar­riage have intro­duced a bal­lot mea­sure that would require het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples to have a child with­in three years or have their mar­riages annulled.

The Wash­ing­ton Defense of Mar­riage Alliance acknowl­edged on its Web site that the ini­tia­tive was “absurd” but hoped the idea prompts “dis­cus­sion about the many mis­guid­ed assump­tions” under­ly­ing a state Supreme Court rul­ing that upheld a ban on same-sex mar­riage.

The mea­sure would require cou­ples to prove they can have chil­dren to get a mar­riage license. Cou­ples who do not have chil­dren with­in three years could have their mar­riages annulled.

Note: Quotes are from the CNN arti­cle that was at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/05/gay.marriage.ap/index.html, but has gone 404. See Ini­tia­tive ties mar­riage, pro­cre­ation for fur­ther infor­ma­tion on bal­lot ini­tia­tive 957.

So I actu­al­ly heard from some­one via Orkut. I can’t remem­ber if that’s ever hap­pened to me before or not.

Any­way, I went to check out this per­son­’s pro­file, and real­ized mine was way out of date. Some­day, I swear, I’m going to repro­duce all the ques­tions all those dif­fer­ent places ask right here on my own site, keep that up to date, and refuse to fill out any oth­er pro­files.

Any­way, one of the fields was “From my past rela­tion­ships I learned…” I found the ques­tion more inter­est­ing that most, so I’m repro­duc­ing my answer here, expand­ed a bit.
from my past rela­tion­ships i learned: Some­thing dif­fer­ent every time 🙂 A few of them:

Hon­esty is the only way to relate that’s worth both­er­ing with.
Love isn’t enough.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is price­less.

Rela­tion­ships take lots of work from every­one, and some­times they just aren’t sus­tain­able.

Sex is often the canary in the rela­tion­ship mine. Bar­ring health issues that make sex impos­si­ble or unlike­ly, a decrease in sex­u­al inti­ma­cy is usu­al­ly due to a decrease in over­all inti­ma­cy, which is Bad.

There’s no under­stand­ing crazy. Just walk away with as much of your san­i­ty intact as pos­si­ble.

Nobody deserves abuse.

Stay­ing togeth­er is sel­dom “best for the kids.” In fact, I’ve yet to see a sit­u­a­tion in which it was best for any­one.

There’s no way one (sane) per­son in a cou­ple or oth­er group­ing is hap­py if the oth­er is mis­er­able.

If some­one changes in a big way right after you get mar­ried, start try­ing to get an annul­ment. He isn’t the per­son you thought you knew.

While an adult can lie to you eas­i­ly, his kids can’t. Nei­ther can his pets. If either does­n’t behave con­sis­tent­ly with what she says, or she does­n’t treat them the way she says she believes in rais­ing kids or pets or what­ev­er, she’s a liar. Leave before you get any clos­er.

Some things are worth the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a bro­ken heart.

“If you real­ly loved me you’d…” means that the speak­er is an abu­sive ass­hole try­ing to get you to do some­thing that’s unhealthy for you.

Play­ing togeth­er is essen­tial. So is work­ing togeth­er.

Peo­ple are not projects.

Knights are noto­ri­ous for set­ting up new tow­ers with you inside them. The only safe “res­cue” is the DIY ver­sion, where you just walk out of the prison

What are yours?