Many assumed the idea of gay marriage would be another week-and-a-half wonder, but it’s still going strong. Harvey Fierstein, due to play Mrs. Santa Claus in drag in the Macy’s parade in New York (but then removed and given his own float) suggested, jokingly, that this’d make the Clauses a same-sex couple in the Op-Ed section of The NY Times (11-26). Fierstein went on to enumerate various ways gays have contributed to America, including Virgil Thomson, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman and Aaron Copeland, all of whose music is used in weddings. ‘Yes,’ says Harvey, ‘.. .we get to provide the music, but we are not allowed to get married ourselves.’
Kathleen Parker, in the Chicago Tribune (11-26) can’t really support gay marriage because marriage ‘… has evolved to promote, support and nurture that basic necessary [family] unit’ (which, of course, it hasn’t: marriage evolved as a property exchange). But she goes way out of her way to point out that many of her friends and relatives are gay, and that she even used to be a ‘fag hag.’
David Brooks, in The NY Times (11-21), conservative though he is, out and out supports the concept, saying marriage ideally makes better people out of the couple and why should this be denied to gay people.