That's what you get for having friends that reads. Especially fancy stuff like the Times.

All I can offer is a recap of Jerry Springer. Which in itself is a testament against hetero marriages.

Bah. That's a horrible argument, printed in the lowly NYT or on lofty Furdell.com.

First it presumes that marriage is a political tool or has political importance. By treating it the same way you are conceding the core ground of the difference in ideology.

Also, your protest is what they want. Take heed conservatives! Next the liberals will stop voting. And leave the country! That'll really show you!

Nobody wants liberals to stop marrying. (Stop voting, yes. Stop marrying, no.) Christians want more heterosexual marriage, not less, even among non-Christians. (For stronger families, or whatever.) Further marginalizing themselves has never been the aim -- if anything, they want to foist their lifestyles on the rest of us.

And the wedding industry -- and don't for two seconds think there isn't a wedding industry -- would love to have everyone's money. The more money they lose from marriage inequality, the more they might be influenced to do something about it, as well.

My beef with the people in the story is this cockamamie comparison between refusing to marry while a gay-marriage ban is in place with refusing to sit at a segregated lunch counter. Putting aside the obscene self-importance that places on these well-intentioned heteros, it's illogical - part of the success of breaking things like segregated restaurants was the loss of business that they suffered when whites stayed away. The wedding industry - and Andrew's right, it's huge - ain't going to feel these few stay-aways at all.

Sit-ins at lunch counters are also far more visible than couples who choose to cohabitate but not marry when lots of people of doing the same things for lots of other reasons.

And if you don't think marriage and the laws surrouding it are political tools, then you weren't paying much attention during the gay marriage fights, nor those over welfare reform, the FMLA, or any other political struggle affecting women's rights.

The wedding industry - and Andrew's right, it's huge - ain't going to feel these few stay-aways at all.

So because the group of marriage boycotters is not immediately large, the entire notion is doomed to fail? Better to just sit back and accept the world as it is, since there's nothing I can do to change it?

Oh, and another thing...there's only one difference between this particular segregation and the other ones that pockmark American history: after the fact, everyone agrees the other ones were wrong. In sixty years, you'll be able to lump this in with lunch counters without anybody getting offended.

I don't think discrimination against gays is any less heinous than against any other group, and I agree with you that it will been seen in hindsight as ridiculous.

As for whether the boycott is "doomed to fail"... if you're doing it because you feel it would be unjust to avail yourself of a segregated institution, more power to you. But if you're doing it to effect change, you have to weight the likelihood that your method of choice will work. A marriage boycott just won't.

You present a false choice when saying you should boycott or else "sit back and accept the world as it is." There are myriad ways to get involved in this fight... but most of them require doing stuff rather than *not* doing stuff - talking or writing to elected officials, raising money, attending rallies, etc.

To go back to the lunch-counter analogy: would civil rights have advanced based on the bus boycotts alone, or did it require marches and freedom riders and voting drives and protests?

On the first stuff: touch?.

On the last paragraph: well, civil rights is a whole umbrella of more complicated stuff. But I do think that every little bit counts. There's always more you can do, but at the same time, there's only so much you can handle. I got my fill of attending rallies and marches and protests when we failed to prevent the Iraq war. I know it's lame, but I just don't have the energy for that kind of thing anymore -- you just get the same outcome, which is derision from the public at large. I get enough of that by not getting married.

Well, you and I differ on what we think the monolithic fundy-right wants; so be it.

I still say you are conceding the core intellectual point.

Still, I think Kimberly makes a good point about the visibility of your protest. Sounds like it's time for furdell.com to add the "living-in-sin bedroom-cam"

Oh, the cam is a wonderful idea!! You know, because of the political statement it would make. Not just because I prefer homemade porn. Actually, I guess if Andrew were directing, it would be semi-professional. Forget it.