"It seems the woman who falsely claimed she received an anti-gay 'tip' from two patrons..."

"... never donated the money she received from supporters to help wounded vets like she promised."

Liars lie.

In other news, Bill Clinton doodled a penis.

"Kids React to Gay Marriage."

This video has gone viral.

Much as I support same-sex marriage and think these children are adorable, I have a few problems:

1. Using children to get out a political message. They're too young to consent, so it's an invasion of their privacy, and they're too young really to understand the issues, even if their out-of-the-mouths-of-babes opinions charm us (especially when we agree).

2. The video is edited, so we don't hear any "wrong" answers the videographers didn't want us to hear, and we don't hear the extent of the leading questions and promptings by the adults... which takes us back to point 1: using children. When you do things with children, that particular child's interests must be placed first.

3. These children — at least most of them — have probably already been indoctrinated. We're told they are "from California." What schools have they attended? What have they been told? Do they even know what sexual feeling is? Do they understand the issue basically in terms of being nice to other people and liking what you like?

"New Study Says That Lesbians Hold Hands Better."

A headline at Slate marks the emergence of a new rule in reporting on scientific studies: Where a difference is shown between gay and straight people, portray what is true of gay people to be better.

What's bad about the way heterosexual people hold hands? There's a "dominant" position, and the man takes it. That's funny. I always thought there's a more comfortable position and the man lets me take it. Am I supposed to feel all subordinated retrospectively?

In 1971, the sociologist Erving Goffman wrote that while handholding appears egalitarian, “the details neatly allow an expression of the traditional [heteronormative] ideal.”

What word got replaced by that distinctively un-1971 word "heteronormative"? Here's the context, in Goffman's "Relations in Public," and it turns out he just said "the traditional ideal." Slate's Katy Waldman barged in there with "heteronormative." Why? To keep us from thinking too positively about heterosexual couples for a second there? In case we're unable to realize that "traditional" in 1971 is a reference to heterosexual couples?

[Goffman] continues: “The insides of the two hands are pressed together, in mutual embrace as it were, but the outside of the male's hand typically faces the oncoming world, whereas the outside of the female's hand merely follows in the wake of projection." Goffman believes that the man can "let go at will, since he is the grasper, allowing him to deal with the enemy; she, however, must wriggle out to be free." But, he asks, "For what reason could she have for needing to free her hand?”

Did you ever perceive that it was harder for one of 2 handholders to break loose? This gives new insight into the old Beatles song "I Want to Hold Your Hand." It meant: I want to dominate and control you.

In the new study, by Alison Che and Richard Wassersug in the Journal of Homosexuality, 340 women in same-sex relationships were asked to report on their handholding positions:

Out of that overwhelming stream of variables, exactly two made a difference: height (the taller partner was more likely to lead) and relationship history with a man (the partner who’d dated a guy was more likely to trail). “Our results suggest that handholding position does not reflect a dominance or power differential between partners, at least within a female-female relationship,” the researchers write. Instead, it is matter of anatomical expedience. Straight women should be so rational.

Where is the evidence that straight women aren't going mainly on physical comfort? All I see here is the correlation to having previously been in a relationship with a man, but that seems to suggest that within some same-sex couples, one woman takes what we call the feminine role. And that raises a deeper issue in Waldman's concept of what is "better." Within a couple's physical relationship, do we know that it is "better" for neither to dominant? Waldman wields the pejorative "heteronormative" — the oppressive assumption that what heterosexuals do is the norm — but she's insensitive about insinuating that there's something bad about couples whose erotic feelings arise out of domination and submission.

Che and Wassersug take things a little further by theorizing a link between heights and dating history, suggesting that shorter (smaller) women may feel more “femme” relative to other ladies, which could lead them to adopt traditionally feminine gender roles. Those same roles would also dispose them to dating guys. So the same variable— shortness — that leads gay women to experiment with men might independently steer them toward taking the lower hand position in their same sex partnerships.

Can we take things a little further by theorizing other explanations?! These researchers (and Waldman) are trying so hard to put some formal idea of equality first that they're loading bizarre meaning onto the phenomenon of being short. It would make much more sense to acknowledge that sexual feeling isn't about abstract concepts of equity. A man and a woman — or 2 women or 2 men — can have completely equal respect for each other's worth and still have a sexual relationship with elements of domination and submission. That could even be better. What do these people really know about what is better?

Waldman ends like this:

The life-altering effects of a few inches aside...

Do you find it amusing — that idea that height affects your sexual orientation?

... what difference does it make how we entwine our extremities while meandering through the park? I guess it’s nice to be aware of when your expressions of affection are doubling as power displays. 

Why is that nice? So you can back off from enjoying what naturally felt good to you and align your behavior more with abstract ideals?

Same-sex couples have been held up before as examples of healthy egalitarianism. This study speaks, in one small, specific way, to lesbians’ ability to discard gender scripts that don’t suit them. If only their hetero counterparts were so good at knowing when to tighten a grip — and when to let go.

Learn from lesbians, you hetero counterparts. The press will be leading the way, reporting studies that can be presented as showing that lesbians are teaching us as we progress along the historical arc toward equality.

ADDED: Helping me proofread, Meade read this out loud. At the Beatles reference he sang — "I wanna dominate and contro-o-o-ol you, I wanna dominate and control" — when he got to the end — he was all: "'Equality,' I spoke the word/As if a lesbian wedding vow/Ah, but I was so much taller then/I'm shorter than that now."

Living in compressed time with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"We live in an era of time compression," said Justice Kennedy. And "It’s simply stunning to me to see the changes in attitudes." He was talking about attitudes about sexual orientation.

At the same time — compressed time, presumably — he said that, in a "functioning democracy," courts should not be "resolv[ing] the most serious issues of the day."

"I just don’t think that a democracy is responsible if it doesn’t have a political, rational, respectful, decent discourse so it can solve these problems before they come to the court."

Attitudes are changing rapidly, and in a democracy, serious issues should be resolved outside of the courts. And yet he wrote the decision that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Why not wait for the democratic process to play out?

Maybe — in the mind of Anthony Kennedy — they did wait. DOMA was passed in 1996. They waited 17 years.

In compressed time, that's what? Half a century?

"Obviously not designed by a heterosexual man. It looks damaged and hideously asymmetrical."

Says Clyde, in the comments to the post about that very bizarre (and asymmetrical dress Cate Blanchett wore to the Paris premiere of "Blue Jasmine").

I say:

Heteros are bugs for symmetry and on guard for hideousness and damage? What evidence is there of that?

I see hetero men around all the time who don't seem to mind hideousness and damage.

Clyde says:

Ann, while standards of beauty vary from culture to culture, one thing that is a constant is facial symmetry. Asymmetrical features are often subconsciously viewed as evidence of bad genes. While we are talking about clothing, most of it is very symmetrical as well. I can't think of any men's clothing that isn't. The exceptions are in high-fashion women's clothing, and it's usually something like a strap on one shoulder, or a curved or diagonal cut on a dress or skirt, done to highlight one part or another of the wearer's body. In the case of Kate's dress, it didn't highlight anything; rather than accentuating her beauty, it drew attention away from it. You might as well have called it the Harrison Bergeron collection. It was the sartorial equivalent of Miley Cyrus's VMA performance. It got everyone talking, but not in a good way.

As for the "not designed by a heterosexual man" bit, a female friend and I have discussed some of the more outrageous fashion runway pictures we've seen in online galleries, and we generally agreed that anyone who would create some of the outfits that not only looked ugly but uncomfortable as well could not like women, at all. A straight man would create something to try to make a woman look good, something that would make a man say, "That dress looks great! She's hot! I want her!" A gay man might try to sabotage her so that the man would say, "That dress looks hideous! She's a hot mess! I pity her! Maybe I should try guys instead."

Not responding to all of that —I'm still drinking my first cup of coffee — I double down on symmetry:

"While we are talking about clothing, most of it is very symmetrical as well. I can't think of any men's clothing that isn't."

So what's the tailor talking about when he asks if you "dress right or dress left"?

And:

Aside from the testicles issue...

The handkerchief pocket is on one side.

You wear a watch on one side.

Most sports are one-sided -- tennis, bowling, golf, baseball...

Masturbation... do you balance which hand you use?

You guys are very asymmetrical. The whole idea of orientation only to one of the 2 sexes is asymmetrical.

Now — finishing up that coffee — I'll just add that I'm not buying the old idea that gay men don't want women to look beautiful. Go to that the second link above — the one that takes you to the photo of Cate Blanchett's dress — and read some of the other posts there. Tom & Lorenzo — gay guys — clearly love to see women looking beautiful. Look at this post of theirs about Lena Dunham's photo shoot for Marie Claire magazine:

We pray to all that is holy and fabulous that Miss Lena has learned a very valuable and important lesson here....

It’s okay to shoot for fabulous, honey. You’re more than capable of landing on it.

Etc. 

"If a person does not put across his views in the presence of children, no measures against him can be taken..."

"People of nontraditional sexual orientations can take part in the competitions and all other events at the [Olympic] Games unhindered, without any fear for their safety whatsoever."

Jodie Foster's Golden Globes speech isn't nutty or incoherent.

That's my working theory. Maybe you disagree. Transcript here. Highlights:

"So while I’m here being all confessional, I guess I have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public.... I am single. Yes I am, I am single...."

That is, she rejects the yep-I'm-gay routine. She's not being all confessional, like these other people.

"... But now I’m told, apparently that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show.....

"But seriously, if you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too might value privacy above all else. Privacy.  Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was."

Well said. That's rather old-fashioned and not what the pop-culture media have been telling us is the right way to be these days.

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan says: "What unadulterated bullshit."

"How can gender be 100% nurture and sexuality be 100% nature?"

The question of the day, pithily articulated.