Gays ballistic over Keillor remark

Mark Shea describes it as a "classic case of liberal jacobinism punishing the insufficiently pure" in his post, "Garrison Keillor Fails to be Sufficiently Adoring of Homosexual Marriage" (Catholic and Enjoying It, March 15, 2007). Keillor himself is no social conservative. Shea writes: "Keillor, an old liberal war horse from way back, who has made fun of the GOP stance on gay marriage on his show, nonetheless writes a column in which he dares to state that twice two is four and to suggest that there is something out of whack about a conception of marriage built entirely on narcissism."

Money grafs:

Nature is about continuation of the species -- in other words, children. Nature does not care about the emotional well-being of older people.

Under the old monogamous system, we didn't have the problem of apportioning Thanksgiving and Christmas among your mother and stepdad, your dad and his third wife, your mother-in-law and her boyfriend Hal, and your father-in-law and his boyfriend Chuck. Today, serial monogamy has stretched the extended family to the breaking point. A child can now grow up with eight or nine or 10 grandparents -- Gampa, Gammy, Goopa, Gumby, Papa, Poopsy, Goofy, Gaga and Chuck -- and need a program to keep track of the actors.

And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife's first husband's second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin's in-laws and Bruce's ex, Mark, and Mark's current partner, and I suppose we'll get used to it.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

Shea: "To this rather mild and droll observation of the bleedin' obvious, Dan Savage replies by raving like a flaming drama queen and Andrew Sullivan's One Man Magisterium declares Keillor a homophobe. All because the old liberal who has made it clear he supports gay marriage has also dared to observe that, you know, it's not all about *you*."

[Hat tip to Mark Shea]