Not Supporting Gay Marriage is Gay

I went to a wedding the other day and it was a very gay time. It was gay as in happy and it was gay as in homosexual. 

The couple consisted of my uncle Tim and his longtime partner Andrew. The two were legally registered as domestic partners in New York City when that became legal in the 1990s, but an official marriage sanctioned by New York State gives them more protections and they wanted to make it official.

True to form, their wedding was a class-act through and through and it took all the hype and bluster surrounding the gay marriage issue and flushed it down the proverbial toilet. It contained more dignity and heartfelt honesty in the few minutes it lasted than most of the church services I have had the misfortune to sit through. And by my count there were way more Christians and heterosexuals at this than Atheists or gays.

It was not that long ago that the term ‘gay marriage’ was an oxymoron—Of course gay people don’t get married; they’re gay, duh. One can support gay marriage without switching away from the default definition of marriage being a heterosexual institution; it’s how most of us came to identify the concept. You’re not a homophobe if announcing someone “husband and husband” sounds bad. You can support the rights of gays and still love the English language more. Gays aren’t asking for your approval; they’re asking to be left alone.

The debate over gay marriage in the U.S. consists of people of different political camps overlooking the same essential issue. The issue is: does the government have the right to regulate or the moral authority to approve the personal relationships between consenting adults? I think most of us agree it does not.

The reason gay marriage should be recognized is not because the government needs to be on a crusade to make us all love the gays. Society is changing its views of gays on its own. Gay marriage should be nationwide for reasons that Americans of all political stripes ought to believe: that free men and women have the right to determine their own next of kin and form relationships with whomever they choose. Put that to a vote and America will say yes.  

Legalize Prostitution Already

A German language professor from the University of Georgia was arrested in the Atlanta area last week for prostitution and running a prostitution ring. He was not accused of robbing or cheating anyone, threatening anyone or withholding cash from his working girls.

In fact his harem of working girls may not extend farther than himself. He was arrested dressed as a woman after arranging a meeting and exchange of “services” with an undercover cop.

It’s a sad sight to see a tenured professor from one’s alma mater caught selling their own wrinkled, transvestite ass for cash. But what’s sadder is that we as a society have not come to our senses enough to legalize prostitution already.

Like laws outlawing the use of drugs, laws against prostitution are not only an infringement on personal liberty, but are a bizarre relic of puritanical times that stands against human nature and individual freedom.

The places in the western world were prostitution are legal—Nevada and Amsterdam—manage it quite well and are fully functioning municipalities within democratic societies that have not collapsed into anarchy.

So why is prostitution still illegal in most of the U.S.? Isn’t this the land of the free? Aren’t we supposed to be champions of capitalism? How are contemporary sexual mores improved by prostitution being illegal?

It’s your pussy to sell, ladies. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, especially if you like eating pussy. It’s common wisdom that everyone pays for it one way or another. Why not just pay for it outright? Wouldn’t that make for more honest relationships between men and women? What’s the difference plunking down beaucoup dollars on drinks, dinner and other things we spend money on when we’re trying to get laid and simply paying a prostitute for the same services but none of the bullshit?

I know that many people who call for the legalization of prostitution have an idealized view of the industry. The sassy hooker with the heart of gold is a myth, and most prostitutes are not go-getting entrepreneurs boldly taking a stand against society’s conventions, but rather desperate people usually exploited by men for their earnings, often living in fear of violence or deportation or are addicted to drugs.

Legalizing prostitution, like legalizing drugs, will allow society to purge the criminal element. The worst gangsters in the country used to sell alcohol; and alcohol kills more people every year than all the illegal drugs combined, but no one in their right mind calls for it to be banned. And grocery store owners are not gunning each other down for the right to sell you beer.

When alcohol was outlawed, people still found ways to drink and criminals became rich. So it is today with drugs and prostitution. Gambling is becoming legal in more and more places as states and municipalities seize on the opportunity to improve their local economy and grab tax revenues that would otherwise go to other states. Why should a law-abiding American have to travel to Nevada to get a legal, paid-for lay? Let brothels thrive next to marijuana cafes. Every city can have its own red light district and regulate prostitution according to its own needs. Want to find the nearest hooker that’s certified disease-free and fits your budget? There will be an app for that.

Every city already has a thriving sex trade, and state and local governments could probably fill the holes in their budgets by taxing the holes getting filled by johns every day. We as a people could literally screw our way back to fiscal solvency. 

Male prostitution would be legal also, of course. I’m sure there are lots of straight guys who dream of being some kind of high class gigolo for rich hot supermodels, but like it is today, legal male prostitutes would be mostly patronized by men. Women just don’t need to pay for it and can get sex from men just about whenever they want and spend zero dollars. Even the infamous penis cutter Lorena Bobbitt found a man to have sex with her for free.

Like the legalization of marijuana, prostitution will become legal in our lifetime, and there is no shortage of real crimes for police to investigate. Let’s do right by our communities, countries and cocks and get the balls rolling on legalizing prostitution.

Five Good Ideas Championed by Hippies

It is good and right to hate hippies. Hippie culture is a celebration of weakness and degradation. It’s given us a slice of the population that is equal parts useless and obnoxious and helped home-birth the self-congratulating, smug and cloying “progressive” culture that clogs the brains of many otherwise intelligent people. Hippies often smell funny and they have terrible clothes.

Hippies were the first cultural group in modern history that aligned political causes to a counterculture to such an extent that many legitimate causes became wholly unpalatable to mainstream Americans. I’m convinced that many of the people in Nixon’s silent majority were there not because they really supported U.S. policies in Vietnam, but because they detested the hippies that embodied the vocal opposition more than they distrusted Nixon.

One could almost propose that hippies are some brilliantly successful psych-ops invention meant to quell popular opposition to interventionist military policies. How can we make opposition to undeclared foreign war abroad culturally abhorrent in a democratic society? Gentlemen, I present to you: the Hippy. 

But however much it pains us, we must give credit where credit is due, and hippies have actually embraced some good ideas over the years. They may not have invented anything useful, but their knee-jerk embrace of anything countercultural has actually put a few good items in their erratically-cast hemp nets.

Legalizing marijuana: This is such a widely embraced idea now that it has almost completely escaped the cultural ghetto of the hippie. But without hippies marijuana would not have entered popular culture to the extent it has. Smoking marijuana may turn lazy people into completely useless people and dumb people into outright retards, but throwing people in jail for smoking it makes as much sense as prohibition. It will be legal in our lifetime, and future generations will look at the laws against marijuana the way we look at the outlawing of alcohol. Even elderly people in Florida are toking up before hitting the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Organic food: I once thought that organic food was a wonton excess of effete snobs and tree-hugging imbeciles. But the more information that is available today about the practices of many large agricultural corporations and the effects of many of the additives used regularly in food, the more organic food looks more unavoidably sane. With the increasing popularity of community supported agriculture, it’s possible to eat organic food without entering the orbit of the vegetarian or vegan planets.

Bicycles: Hippies embraced bicycles and helped turn a favorite childhood toy into its own obnoxious subculture. The cyclists who flout the law by breezing through red lights and riding the wrong way down one-way streets and then demand the same rights to the roads as cars share the same sense of entitlement as the hippies. But bicycles are beneficial in and of themselves and for city dwellers they are faster than most public transportation for getting around. (Full hypocrisy disclosure: I own a pickup truck but not a bicycle).

Co-ops: They are voluntary exchanges that organizers can invite or exclude whomever they want. When people think of co-ops in New York, they usually think of apartment buildings controlled by old curmudgeons or supermarkets run by bickering lefties, but who says you can’t start your own for whatever purposes you want? They are good ways to avoid the middleman and save money on things. Illegal day care co-ops are popping up as well; as parents do an end-run around long lists for local kindergarten classes and prohibitively expensive licensed daycare centers.

Preserving National Parks and Forests: Why do we leave it to the hippies to rant and rave about the loss or pollution of public land? It’s not anti-capitalist to want to have a national park. Does the name Theodore Roosevelt mean anything to you? If you like hunting, you like lots of unspoiled nature.

Don’t stop hating hippies; they are a malodorous race of useless clowns. But don’t neglect good ideas just because it may have been embraced by hippies.