June 25, 2008

I'm writing in celebration of the California
decision to allow gays to marry. I'm thrilled—I've always thought that
the idea that gay marriage could hurt or affect straight people in any way was
ridiculous. But a year ago, I found out I was wrong.

I'm a straight woman in her late 20s dating
"the one," by which I mean the man who I'd be happy to wind up married to.
We've been dating about two years, very happily, but one year into the
relationship, he informed me—he didn't ask—that he was going to be
the sperm donor for a lesbian couple that wanted to start a family. I had an
immediate, visceral, physical reaction to the idea of another woman bearing his
child. That's an experience I hope to have with him!

What shocked me was the range of reactions
among my friends. My gay friends and my boyfriend insisted that it was "none of
my business"! They also accused me of being selfish and called me a homophobe!
My straight friends, female and male, agreed that doing this without my
consent was outrageous!

Ultimately, he didn't do it, but this
conflict very nearly ended our relationship. So going forward, I think we
straights and you gays have to talk about this question: If gays have a right
to marriage and family, do they also have a right to start those families with
my boyfriend—no matter what I think and feel about it? Wouldn't it, at
the very least, be only polite to ask the girlfriend or wife for her consent
and blessing, too?

Questions About Gay Marriage

So, QAGM, you're thrilled that gay people won the
right to marry in California, even though you realized a year before gay marriage was
legalized in California that you had been wrong to support marriage equality
because it would lead gay people to believe that we have a right to your
boyfriend's spunk—the position that lesbian couple and all your gay
friends arrived at before gay marriage was legalized in California?

What the fuck are you talking about, lady?

I've read the Supreme Court of California's
decision legalizing gay marriage, all 140 pages of it, twice, QAGM, and I can assure,
you there's not one word in it about your boyfriend's spunk. The gay-marriage
decision and your boyfriend's aborted decision to serve as sperm donor for this
lesbian couple have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, and your efforts
to link them only make you look like a nutcase.

And that's a shame, QAGM, because you're actually
in the right.

Setting aside the legit mystical crap—the
fact that most breeders regard having children by their spouses as the ultimate
expression of their magical heterosexual love—you had every right on
purely logistical grounds to object to your boyfriend fathering a child by
these women. Was your boyfriend planning to be involved in the life of this
child? If so, time he spent with this child would have taken time away from
whatever children you might have together. And what sort of relationship did he
imagine this child would have had with your children? Could he have wound up on
the hook for child support, which would've impacted you financially, too? And
what if this lesbian couple had died in a car wreck after this child had been
born? Would the child then come to live with you?

Your boyfriend should have been able to see how
donating sperm to a lesbian couple would impact you, and that you had a right
to be involved in making this decision. The fact that he didn't involve you,
and still doesn't think he needed to, should make you think twice about
marrying him.

And finally, QAGM, a question: When you say you
had an "immediate, visceral, physical reaction," does that mean you threw a punch? If
you did, a word—or an initialism—to your boyfriend, if he's reading
this: DTMFA.

A few months before I graduated, a friend
revealed that she had been lusting after me for as long as she'd known me, and
wanted to hook up. The trouble was that she's in a long-term relationship. She
didn't see this as a problem—she was willing to cheat—but I didn't
want to be a part of that, and turned her down. She then played some silly
games and convinced me to kiss her when I was drunk, and later flat-out
propositioned me (again while I was drunk), and I refused again. Then we
graduated and moved hundreds of miles away from each other, which I expected
would be the end of it.

Now, though, a month later, she wrote to tell
me that she's "not over" me. Was I right to turn her down, or should I, as she
argued, let her make her own mistakes? Should I let her boyfriend (and likely
fiancé) know about any of this?

Not An Adultery Helper

Can we please—all of us—resist the
urge to define adultery down? To commit adultery, a person has to be married, not just dating or going
steady or even engaged. This girl, if you fuck her, may be a lying, cheating
sack of shit, and you may be a cad, but she won't be an adulteress, NAAH. She can't be one
until after she's married.

Now clearly, you want to sleep with this
woman—why write to me otherwise?—and you're probably hoping I'll
say that you were wrong to turn her down. But were you? Well, that depends on
why she's pursuing you, NAAH. Perhaps she wants to cheat before she
marries—before sleeping with someone else rises to the level of adultery—because
she wants to live a little first. Perhaps she wants to make sure before
marriage that the sex she's getting from the boyfriend is as good or better
than sex she'd get elsewhere. Or perhaps she wants to fuck you because she's a
skanky, skanky whore. Perhaps you should ask her.

One final thought: If sleeping with you convinces
this woman that she could never truly be satisfied with her boyfriend and she
ends that relationship before she marries him, you will not only have gotten
into the pants of a woman you find attractive, NAAH, but done your bit to bring
down our divorce rates.

In your most recent column, you wrote, "The
Scouts are famously anti-gay and anti-atheist." While I believe this is true
for the Scouting organization, I have to take issue with the idea that Scouts themselves are anti-gay
and anti-atheist.

I was a Boy Scout. In fact, I am an Eagle
Scout. But this is not exclusive of the fact that I am also gay (and am pretty
much unreligious). But I was not "out" until last fall, my first year of
college, after I was finished with the Scouts (and high school and living at
home). Sadly, I'm pretty sure that the title of Eagle Scout would be taken away
if the BSA organization knew that I was gay. So if you publish this, please
don't use my name or identifying info.

Anonymous Eagle Scout

Thanks for writing, AES, and I apologize for not
being clearer in that response: It is the Boy Scouts Of America that is
anti-gay and anti-atheist. There are a lot of individual Scouts and Scout
leaders out there—I'm hearing from them—who reject and denounce the
BSA's anti-gay, anti-atheist positions. It's too bad the BSA isn't hearing from
them, too.

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