And whoever does the headlines for the website sends out a dog whistle to Maggie Gallagher: For Some, the Beginnings of Gay-Wedding Fatigue. Yep! BIG photomontage to lead it off:
The original print title is " I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do ...." Do all those happy people responding to what's obviously a case of pent-up demand bother you? Of course not!
What do I mean "New York Hello?" The writer is a gay man, and New York is the heartland of snark, so nothing happens without some complaining, and the complaining is arranged to get a laugh (You've watched Seinfeld. You know how it works). It's sometimes called a Yiddish Hello (but don't you goyim try to use it that way). But that brings me to another question, given the dog whistle. You're mostly too young (and too goyische) to remember grandparents or great-uncles responding to any change in anything with the question "Is it good for the Jews"? So I'm just asking, "Is this article good for the LGBT community?" More below the great orange, um,
Yes, this IS good for the community (although I'm waiting for the forces of evil organizations like the American Family Association to cherry pick this article as PROOF that society is going to hell). Marvel at this word picture (this is the one Maggie Gallagher will pluck out, I'm sure):
Mr. Shields, who has been invited to five gay weddings and has a sixth coming up, recalls two men who married in an art gallery filled with S-and-M paintings. “One was a picture of a naked George Washington dwarf standing on top of a pile of slave dwarfs in fetish gear,” he said. “All I could think was, ‘Oh, please, no — we have moms in the room.’"
Yes, we're accustomed to going to the weddings of our college friends, but by the time we hit the age of 35, we figure "Well, that's all over with." Naturally, this came as a surprise for some people as all of their friends started to plan weddings.
When you’re not used to attending any weddings (or have grown out of the practice), this starts to feel like an awful lot of toasting and tuxedo wearing and traveling.
And, of COURSE, don't complain to your friends in California if you want to keep them as friends.
But of course it's a good thing because our weddings (mostly) are just like their weddings:
But in most ways, gay weddings are exactly the same as straight ones, which is to say, an emotional minefield. The push and pull between the sets of parents. Who was asked to make a toast and who wasn’t. The pity parties (always a bridesmaid, never a bride). Same-sex weddings can also add an additional layer of angst: Why can’t my father be more supportive of my relationship, the way that weeping father of the groom appears to be? Am I really allowed to feel euphoria for my marrying gay friends when the Defense of Marriage Act is still in place?
Then, the article discusses how many people get married who shouldn't (just like them), the issues of throwing a large lavish wedding for a couple who has been together for 30 years (if they can afford it, why not?), and ends with the whimper of the consequences of all these marriages:
Mike Vollman, a movie marketing consultant, laughed when I complained about the wed-a-thon happening among my friends. Enjoy it while you can, he said, because weddings are a breeze compared with what comes next. “Oh, just wait,” he said. “We’re now on the other side of the gay-wedding bubble with our friends. You know what’s there? I call it death by gay baby shower.”
No snark, no real condemnation, just an acknowledgement of how this utterly new thing has become a part of every day life in the cultural capital and the political capital (Washington DC) of the country. This is indeed what progress looks like.