The White Peril 白禍

I'd bet I was the last gay man with an Internet connection to be turned on to this set of videos on You Tube. Part 1 is a better crack high if you want fast-burning fuel for queeny comments: though it's hard to blame her for recommending silhouettes that plenty of other people thought were hot back then, you get the feeling that she's not even aware matte-finished fabric exists.

But Part 2 is, to me, more deeply and genuinely horrifying. First of all, the way the woman handles a slotted spoon and unceremoniously plunks that banana into the blender makes it abundantly clear that she couldn't find her way around her kitchen without GPS navigation (sadly unavailable in the late '80s). Second--given the flinty glint in her eye and her pasted-on, curled-lip smile while she gives dietary advice--you just know she's standing there thinking, I COULD MURDER A STEAK AND BAKED POTATO RIGHT NOW! MY GRANDMOTHER'S SOUL FOR A RIBEYE!!!!!

The not-so-surprise update to the story is that, to judge from her website, Ms. Dickson has enrolled in the beauty maintenance program at the Joan Rivers School. A real pity. She had the bone structure to age with character.

Oh, come on. Michael and Henry Lewis are having a spaz over this statement by James Joyner:

Is being gay tantamount to being deaf? My instinct is that it is not, since it impacts a much more narrow range of the human experience. At the same time, would I choose for my kids to be gay? Absolutely not. There are plenty of disadvantages that come with it and no obvious upside. If they turned out to be gay, though, they would continue to have my love and support.

Michael and Henry both say the only downside to being gay stems from other people's narrow-mindedness. Is that the case for everyone, though? I've known a fair number of gay couples who regret that they can't have a child together. Is it really possible to believe that social pressure alone accounts for the desire to see their combined genetic heritage reflected in their child? You don't have to be one of those mean-spirited people who think of adopted children as somehow not "real" or who assume every childless person lives a pathetic, unhappy life to recognize the human instinct to procreate and to concede that responding to it is "valid."

From a different angle, parents do all sorts of things to ensure happiness by their own definition for their children. The line between encouraging a child to rise to high standards and tamping down his personality isn't always clear. Still, it's not uncommon for parents to foist piano lessons on their children, or to pressure them into going to parochial school, or to refuse to pay for college if it's not Ivy, when the children's native aptitudes and interests clearly run in different directions. There's an obvious and direct way in which rejecting an existing child's core self and trying to substitute another of the parents' own choosing causes unhappiness.

Would manipulating genes have a comparable effect? It doesn't seem to me that it would, though I can only speculate, of course. A child might feel a bit odd if told that Mom underwent some kind of drug regimen to incline him toward engineering rather than painting, but since the only life he would know would (presumably) be that of an inclination toward engineering, I can't imagine that he'd be haunted by not having been able to live as his "natural" self. Anyway, it's already natural for people, when they're feeling down, to wonder whether people living different lives are happy or more productive or what have you.

And that's always struck me as what this debate is really about for a lot of gay people: they seem to think that accepting that some people might not want themselves or their children to be gay somehow reflects badly on us. Hence the indignant declarations that we are too happy and that prejudice from hetero-meanies is all that keeps us from being more so. I don't see why that stance is necessary. Life is about trade-offs for everyone, and part of living in a free society is respecting people who prioritize things differently. Those of us who are out homosexuals should be more aware of that than anyone.