I didn’t mean to sound as if I were coming out in favor of lizard marriage.

The point isn’t that I think the government should recognize lizard marriages (whatever that would mean). It’s that I think it’s a mistake to concede the government any authority over marriage in the first place. If George Bush signed a Presidential decree stating that Citizen Kane is trash and nobody should see it, I would not be outraged by that, either, even though it’s a patently ridiculous claim; I never considered G.W. an authority on film in the first place, and I simply don’t care enough about his opinion to get worked up over it. At the most, it would be an occasion for expressing some contempt about his taste in film.

The people whose opinions about marriage matter are the families (for secular marriage) and the churches (for religious marriage). In either case, the best thing for the government to do is not try to fix up its policy in one direction or the other, but rather simply to butt out and stop acting as if it had any business offering its opinions on what is or isn’t a valid marriage.

I’d be outraged if the courts said that two lizards could become married.

I wouldn’t.

What does it matter who (or what) the government says can get married? What makes them an authority whose opinion is worth caring about? Good marriages don’t depend on the government’s consent and bad marriages aren’t made better through the government’s busybodying.

The problem is that marriage is properly (1) a civil ritual and (2) a religious sacrament, and I don’t see why any respect at all — even the minimal respect involved in treating something as a serious matter for outrage — is due to the government’s arbitrary meddling with either.

Jesus. He’s like the creepy aging Liberace of the fashion industry.

The photograph of him at the beginning of the story tells you as much or more than most of the interview, really.

Because it’s completely absurd to worry about widespread abuse in high school relationships. Right.

Still, does it have a third and fifth “ever?” I think not!

My favorite part is here:

R.T.: I was surprised that so much of your book was about Gloria Feldt, Ellie Smeal, Catharine MacKinnon. Only at the very end do you mention someone like Rebecca Walker.

K.O’B.: Are you asking about [why I didn’t discuss] twenty- or thirty-something feminism?

R.T.: Yes. The MacKinnon quote about how “all heterosexual intercourse is rape” is old news. There has been a whole other wave of sex-positive feminism in part in response to ideas like that. …

Because, you know, the “quote” that is “old news” does not exist.

Not that that’s ever stopped anyone from throwing MacKinnon to the wolves in order to unsuccessfully insulate their own hip sexyclub from antifeminist criticism, of course.

This…

R.T.: But social expectations make that —

K.O’B.: Society will never, ever, ever, ever validate it. Ever. Ever. So, next question. [Because] now we’re baying at the moon: Damn, life’s unfair! Damn! Life’s unfair!

… comes in as a close second. I think it’s the third and the fifth “evers” that really make the quote.