I just got hold of the ACLU’s updated second edition of Too High A Price: The Case Against Restricting Gay Parenting. As the idea that gays can parent as well as anybody else moves from radical notion to common sense in America, years behind most European countries, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere, and as the statistics flow in on the success of gay families, it’s good to have at hand the actual research done on this heartening story of increased hope for America’s throw-away children.
Here are some numbers to start with.
In the United States of America, there are 523,085 kids in foster care. 118,761 of these are waiting for adoption. Stories of families waiting months, even years, for a child to adopt give a skewed perspective on the whole picture. Thousands of children are born to prostitutes and drug addicts who die or abandon them, and many of these kids – if they don’t die in the first couple of years of their life – develop serious health or psychological problems that make most people avoid them like the plague.
These kids are not the whole story, by any means, but keep them in mind when you see the numbers who live their lives out as foster children and never make it off the welfare list as a taxpayer burden into a family they can call their own. It’s a complex and heart-breaking picture. About 21,000 children reached 18 in 2003 having spent their whole lives in foster care – never having been picked up, in other words, by a family that wanted to adopt them. Within two years of “aging out” of the system, “only 54% had completed high school, fewer than half were employed, 60% of the young women had given birth to a child, 25% had been homeless and 30% were receiving public assistance.” (Too High A Price, p. 78)
Given what ought to be an overwhelming consensus on getting little lost souls into families, you’d think the richest nation on earth would find a way to make this happen. It is, actually. There are lots of hard-working caring people in welfare agencies busting their bones to find homes for kids, and lots and lots of success stories.
No thanks, of course, to the boys down at the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition who cite the bogus research of the professional gay-hater Paul Cameron (google him for a study in absurdity). Except for the fact that they have the ear of politicians and are able to sway folk with little or no knowledge of how research is conducted and peer-reviewed, they would be laughed out of town. Politics being what it is, however, gays and others who understand the role gays are increasingly playing in building strong families with children, have to take an inordinate amount of time responding to their false claims.
Since the political right in America started calling these folks part of their base, and have made pandering to their religious biases a fact of life, access by needy children to the pool of loving parents has been significantly slowed down. Both the Catholic Church and evangelicals have found reason to poison the well and put gays on the defensive.
So be it. Call it part of the long slow climb out of a very dark place. Too High a Price has removed the doubts at least of those open to empirically based critical studies.
Twenty-five studies have been conducted in the past couple of decades since gays first started adopting kids in significant numbers, and the results are unequivocal. There is no evidence whatever that gays do worse than others. In fact, children of gays often appear better adjusted than their peers with mixed sex parents. Some differences occur (and this is where the religious conservatives have trouble with the data, and claim kids suffer from “identity problems”) in that these kids are less likely to think of men as non-emotional breadwinners and women as subservient homemakers than kids on the average. The “problems” turn out to be a function of what constitutes cultural values.
Professionals in mental health and child rearing, in fact, worry less, if at all, about girls who want to become bank presidents, and more about self-esteem, social skills, and an ability to love and accept responsibility. And in that area, kids of gay parents do as well as anybody else. There are no exceptions to this in all of the studies available for analysis. Furthermore, these conclusions are supported by the following professional organizations:
• the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), the oldest and largest membership organization of its kind
• the American Academy of Pediatrics, (AAP), and organization of 60,000 pediatricians
• the American Medical Association, the nation’s chief organization of medical professionals
• the American Psychiatric Association, with 35,000 member physicians
• the American Psychological Association, a group whose 150,000 members publish Developmental Psychology
• the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• The National Association of Social Workers
• the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC)
• the American Academy of Family Physicians, an organization of 94,000 family physicians
• the Society for Research in Child Development, an organization whose 5000 members publish the journal Child Development.
One organization, the American College of Pediatricians, it should be noted, split off from the American Academy of Pediatrics when it published its policy of supporting gay families. Their 60 members formed their own organization based on “Judeo-Christian traditional values,” and ignore the findings of research that there is no appreciable difference between kids of gays and kids of straights in the areas of:
• the child’s social development
• the child’s cognitive development
• parenting quality
• the quality of parent/child relationships
• the quality of relationships between parents
• the sex identity of children, and
• correspondence in parents’ and children’s sexual orientation.
Besides a slightly more open attitude toward gender roles, it turns out that kids raised by lesbian moms have a slightly greater openness to same-sex relationships. Not a higher degree of lesbianism (these kids, like any others, discover their sexuality; they do not have it thrust upon them), but a more openly expressed willingness to concede there is nothing wrong with them. Once again, a right-wing nightmare, and a progressive’s idea of a positive value.
Listen carefully to the line of reasoning by the religious right when they discuss gay adoptions. You will likely hear the point that “kids raised by single parents do not do as well as kids raised by a mother and a father.” Find out if these people really believe that, if they know the research and are denying it for ideological reasons. There are two terrible injustices in this false conclusion. The first is the assumption that gays are always single and straights are always in couples. In fact, it is only because the law fails to recognize gay couples in many instances that they appear to be single. Children being taken into same-sex couples’ homes are as much wanted children as can be found. As for the single parent bugaboo, anybody who looks at differences among single parents will see it is the resources the parent brings to bear on childrearing, and not the fact of single parenting, that makes all the difference. Kids raised by single parents where one parent has died fare better than kids raised by single parents who are divorced, for example. This is a case where the “average” figures remove the significance from a conclusion entirely.
And all this says nothing about the fact that because of the reality of fluidity in sexuality and because many succumbed to social pressures to live as heterosexuals in the past, thousands of gay parents produced children when they were living with an opposite-sex spouse or partner, a fact quite independent of their parenting skills. Anti-gay rhetoric inevitably ignores the complexity of the full spectrum of social and sexual behavior.
Currently there are somewhere between one and nine million children living in gay families – the huge gap between the low and high estimates stems from the fact it’s often hard to determine what constitutes a “gay parent” anyway. According to the 2000 census, there are 601,209 same-sex partnerships registered. One-third of the female couples have children under 18 living with them and one-fifth of the male couples. A Kaiser study showed 49% of gay-identified people expressed a desire to parent, and there are gay and lesbian couples living in 96% of all U.S. counties.
Despite this overpowering evidence that gay people want to become parents of kids, do become parents of kids, and do as good a job of it as anybody, the anti-gay prejudice still causes terrible tragedies to occur. Florida, for example, will permit gay people to foster care children, but when those kids become members of a family and form attachments with parents and siblings, the state draws the line and refuses adoption. The film documentary We Are Dad tells the story of Bert, a “throw-away child” born to a crack mother with HIV, whom nobody but his two gay dads would take in, and who later grew out of his HIV status. The result? Since he is no longer HIV he is now eligible for adoption by a “real” family and lives under threat of being ripped out of the only home he knows, away from other kids he knows as brothers and sisters. All because religious ideologues have determined from afar that “a kid needs a mother and a father.”
An interesting side note here… Bert is black, and older black kids are the hardest to adopt. Anti-black phobia may save him in this case. Each year he gets closer to eighteen, his chances of living out his childhood in the family he has come to love increase.
Florida is the only state which expressly prohibits gays from adopting, but others keep trying. Florida’s anti-gay law dates back to 1977 when Anita Bryant launched her campaign of fear on the lie that gays are child-molesters. “They can’t reproduce, so they have to convert,” the line went. Anita Bryant later changed her mind and admitted she was uninformed, but the law remains on the books. Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia have all tried to come up with a similar law, but have failed.
The good news is that the move is in the other direction. California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey and New York all have specifically anti-anti-gay laws regarding adoption, and Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Vermont and D.C. all permit partners of gays to adopt as second parents.
We’re on our way.
Too High a Price is available for free online at:
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/parenting/27496pub20061113.html
Also, do yourself a favor and rent three films on gay parenting. You’ll come out with a big smile on your face.
All Aboard Rosie’s Family Cruise
Daddy and Papa
We Are Dad
March 2, 2007
Friday, March 2, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Welcome to Hepzibah!
I am glad you found your way to http://hepzibahpyncheon.blogspot.com/ .
For those of you coming from my Hepzibah list, my heartfelt thanks for your encouragement to launch this project. You know who you are, and you should also know I would never have done it without you. I am grateful.
For those of you who dropped in from another direction, a word of explanation: Unlike most blogs, this blog is not yet a public forum. It’s not even a real blog, so far, but an archive of my past e-mails to friends.
I gave a lot of thought to what I’d display in the archive and what I’d hold back. In the end, I let a lot of things through that are far too personal to attract people who don’t know me, I suspect. But they cover shared space for me and many friends of the last fifteen years, my teaching and my former life in Japan, my responses to insults real and imagined by those in power I think should be talked back to, my efforts to record the progress toward same-sex marriage and the rights of gays and lesbians to dignity and civil equity, resistance to the war in Iraq and the need to address the failure of American democracy, and some analysis of the progress of the American Culture Wars. Some of it is flippant. Some of it overly earnest and naive. There’s lots of different strokes for different folks, and I expect few, if anybody, will want to roam the whole thing. Much (the Japan experience, for example) is personal history, not the stuff of discussion, although your thoughts on any part of it are always welcome.
Where I go with it from here I can’t predict. Now that I am retired and have more time to read, I’ve been saying far less than I once did when I was terribly busy. That’s not surprising, when you think about it. The more you read, the more you learn how much other people know and the more you suspect it might be better to talk less and listen more.
For all the risks of adding smoke but no fire to what’s already out there in this age of bloviation, I think there remain two very good reasons for writing. First, I learned a long time ago I don’t have the head for clean analytical thought. I need to get ideas out in linear form that would otherwise remain a jumble in my head. I talk to think, in other words. Secondly, I’ve discovered the world is a far less hostile place when you’re connected, and nothing connects you like showing what you know and don’t know at any given moment. My e-mail exchanges have been a major part of my life the past couple of decades and I don’t expect that to change.
Please pass things on freely to your friends and others you think might find something of interest here. Please write back often and without reservation and encourage them to do the same. In the past, I kept most e-mail exchanges confidential for the most part, although the exchanges were commonly more interesting than the original commentary. By putting things out on a blog, instead of e-mail, I hope I can avoid the dilemma of what to share and what to keep to myself. If you post to the blog, our exchange will be public. If you write me an e-mail, I will keep it private.
However you write, to agree, disagree, or to point me in another direction, be assured that I appreciate the contact with you.
The archived pieces have been put into ten categories:
1. Ain't Necessarily So (14 articles)
2. Applied Ethics (7)
3. Bitchin' and Testifyin' (7)
4. Film Reviews (3)
5. Life and Death (3)
6. My Life in Japan (21)
7. Relearning America (6)
8. Teaching and Learning (5)
9. The American Empire at War (10)
10. The Long Hard Slog to Gay Liberation (30)
The first, “Ain’t Necessarily So,” is my way of talking back to organized religion. The third one, “Bitchin’ and Testifyin’,” is a miscellaneous category of personal thoughts. The other categories should be self-explanatory. Since some of the pieces actually fit more than one category, if at first you don’t succeed, check elsewhere.
Other pieces may also be displayed, working back from the most recent. To see anything else in the archives, scroll down to the bottom and click on one of the ten category labels under View Posts Tagged. That will display all the articles in that category.
If the archived page you are reading is too unwieldy, and you want to read one thing at a time, find the date of the article you want, scroll down to Blog Archive, click on the year (toggle the arrow down) and then the month, and then the title.
Hope to be talking to you.
Alan
For those of you coming from my Hepzibah list, my heartfelt thanks for your encouragement to launch this project. You know who you are, and you should also know I would never have done it without you. I am grateful.
For those of you who dropped in from another direction, a word of explanation: Unlike most blogs, this blog is not yet a public forum. It’s not even a real blog, so far, but an archive of my past e-mails to friends.
I gave a lot of thought to what I’d display in the archive and what I’d hold back. In the end, I let a lot of things through that are far too personal to attract people who don’t know me, I suspect. But they cover shared space for me and many friends of the last fifteen years, my teaching and my former life in Japan, my responses to insults real and imagined by those in power I think should be talked back to, my efforts to record the progress toward same-sex marriage and the rights of gays and lesbians to dignity and civil equity, resistance to the war in Iraq and the need to address the failure of American democracy, and some analysis of the progress of the American Culture Wars. Some of it is flippant. Some of it overly earnest and naive. There’s lots of different strokes for different folks, and I expect few, if anybody, will want to roam the whole thing. Much (the Japan experience, for example) is personal history, not the stuff of discussion, although your thoughts on any part of it are always welcome.
Where I go with it from here I can’t predict. Now that I am retired and have more time to read, I’ve been saying far less than I once did when I was terribly busy. That’s not surprising, when you think about it. The more you read, the more you learn how much other people know and the more you suspect it might be better to talk less and listen more.
For all the risks of adding smoke but no fire to what’s already out there in this age of bloviation, I think there remain two very good reasons for writing. First, I learned a long time ago I don’t have the head for clean analytical thought. I need to get ideas out in linear form that would otherwise remain a jumble in my head. I talk to think, in other words. Secondly, I’ve discovered the world is a far less hostile place when you’re connected, and nothing connects you like showing what you know and don’t know at any given moment. My e-mail exchanges have been a major part of my life the past couple of decades and I don’t expect that to change.
Please pass things on freely to your friends and others you think might find something of interest here. Please write back often and without reservation and encourage them to do the same. In the past, I kept most e-mail exchanges confidential for the most part, although the exchanges were commonly more interesting than the original commentary. By putting things out on a blog, instead of e-mail, I hope I can avoid the dilemma of what to share and what to keep to myself. If you post to the blog, our exchange will be public. If you write me an e-mail, I will keep it private.
However you write, to agree, disagree, or to point me in another direction, be assured that I appreciate the contact with you.
The archived pieces have been put into ten categories:
1. Ain't Necessarily So (14 articles)
2. Applied Ethics (7)
3. Bitchin' and Testifyin' (7)
4. Film Reviews (3)
5. Life and Death (3)
6. My Life in Japan (21)
7. Relearning America (6)
8. Teaching and Learning (5)
9. The American Empire at War (10)
10. The Long Hard Slog to Gay Liberation (30)
The first, “Ain’t Necessarily So,” is my way of talking back to organized religion. The third one, “Bitchin’ and Testifyin’,” is a miscellaneous category of personal thoughts. The other categories should be self-explanatory. Since some of the pieces actually fit more than one category, if at first you don’t succeed, check elsewhere.
Other pieces may also be displayed, working back from the most recent. To see anything else in the archives, scroll down to the bottom and click on one of the ten category labels under View Posts Tagged. That will display all the articles in that category.
If the archived page you are reading is too unwieldy, and you want to read one thing at a time, find the date of the article you want, scroll down to Blog Archive, click on the year (toggle the arrow down) and then the month, and then the title.
Hope to be talking to you.
Alan
Friday, February 2, 2007
Gavin, You Horndog
Poor old horndog Gavin Newsom. They’ve really got him twirling. Am I glad I’m not in his Size 12s at the moment.
Let me not hide my bias. I love the man. Not in the carnal sense of all those supporters of his lining up to say they’d Hoover him under his desk any day of the week, scandal be damned (I no longer have the knees for that). But as a hero. He recognized the longing of so many gay people to have their partnerships taken seriously and went way out on a limb when he used his office to make waves in the culture war over marriage. For that he’ll have my undying gratitude, and unless he makes more bad moves like this one, my loyalty as well.
So there’s where I’m coming from. Maybe you want not to give any credence to what I say because I can’t come at this story objectively, but I hope you will hear me out.
The objective facts of the story seem to be these: Soon after Gavin Newsom divorced his wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, about a year and a half ago, he and his then secretary, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, hopped into the sack a couple times. And kept it a secret from her husband, Alex Tourk, Gavin’s close friend, campaign manager, political advisor, and deputy chief-of-staff. The couple have a two-year old child. Rippey-Tourk, it turns out, has a substance abuse problem. Apparently she is in AA or some other program which shares AA’s guidelines which suggest coming clean to all those in your life you have wronged as part of the recovery process. Although the cheating was momentary and appears not to have continued, she told her husband what happened. He resigned and the story leaked out.
This morning’s Chronicle has the story splashed over the front page and several inside pages. Some argue this is big news only in San Francisco, but because of recent remarks by the religious right about Nancy Pelosi’s “San Francisco values,” you just know the right is going to make more than hay out of this scandal.
Democrats, by and large, are expressing sympathy with Newsom. Dianne Feinstein, one of his strongest supporters, made a very sympathetic plea for understanding, saying she knows how hard a divorce can be on a man. She knows this from personal experience, she says.
Most people seem to be saying that the disappointment they feel stems not from knowing who he does in bed, but from the betrayal of a friendship. That’s where I came down in my first reaction.
Another group of folk want to dismiss the story out of hand. Arianna Huffington says in her blog this morning that she is fed up with this very sick fascination with people’s sex lives, wishing we could not be so easily distracted from the war and other crucial issues by tabloid journalism and our lust for dirt. Normally, I agree whole-heartedly that what other people do with their naughty parts should not distract us from serious issues, but since this story is now out and about, I can’t help but consider what a remarkable example this is of our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot. How easily we can fail ourselves.
People talk about being let down. About the importance of setting a moral standard. About stupidity.
All of these are real issues. It is astonishing how often such sex scandals keep popping up. Televangelists and politicians seem never to learn from experience, never to quite understand the consequences of living in the public eye.
But I have a slightly different take on the whole thing.
If you look between the lines and stop talking about the world as it ought to be, about duty and responsibility and judgment and setting an example, all of which are terribly important things, and look at how you live in your own body as a member of the human race, you see something different from the role you play as a public figure.
Here’s this man whose marriage has fallen apart. He’s young and virile and how hard is it to imagine he sees the failure of his marriage as a failure with larger implications. Even if it’s all the other guy’s fault; you picked him (her, in this case) and what does that say about your judgment? How many people come to divorce without serious self-doubts. And here’s this beautiful woman he works with. She shares his excitement about political life and is drawn to his charisma. She forms a bond with the man which she shares with her husband. For some reason she has fallen into drug or alcohol dependency and loses the power to think clearly, although cause and effect are not clear here. The two find themselves in circumstances where crossing the line into greater intimacy is overwhelming. Bad move. Tsk tsk. But how empty life would be if you didn’t play with fire at least once?
Go ahead and lecture me on the importance of willing the head to control the groin. I wouldn’t think of arguing with you. I would just ask you to think clearly about how much easier the task gets when your sex drive diminishes and you have had the life experience required to reflect on acting responsibility so you don’t hurt the vulnerable people around you.
Some people manage this when still quite young, but most of us have to bumble our way through a number of relationship disasters before we understand how the power of sexual desire is not something easily mastered by reason.
God knows what Ruby felt about the slip. She didn’t maintain the sexual relationship, and the word “affair” being bandied about is not appropriate. She obviously still loves her husband, the fact that this all took place when their child was a few months old notwithstanding. All three of the characters in this drama are, from all reports, much admired people. Alex seems to have not an enemy in the world. Ruby, (ignore, please, that her name sails dangerously close to the world of pornography), now works for Benefit Magazine, and has no shortage of admirers for her many talents. Gavin’s work with the homeless and other charitable efforts suggest he has a heart a mile wide.
OK, so the guy’s a horndog. He screwed up bigtime. Shot himself in the foot politically and hurt his friends, disappointed his family, and dropped quite a few notches from his hero perch.
My heart goes out to Alex. Wonder what hurts him more, the weakness of his wife or the betrayal by his friend and hero. Wonder if he and Gavin have what it takes to repair the friendship. I hope Ruby can pull herself together; hope she doesn’t weaken at the suggestion this fessing up was self-centered and she continues to regain her integrity; hope their marriage gets stronger for the challenge to it.
And Gavin? He’s not yet 40 years old, about the age Malcolm X was when he went to Mecca for the first time and realized how he had been duped by the American Black Muslim movement. We all need time to grow and stop being stupid. This may be the end of Gavin Newsom’s career. It may also be part of the fire that forges the steel of a more mature man of character and integrity.
Don’t write this guy off just yet.
Berkeley,
February 2, 2007
Let me not hide my bias. I love the man. Not in the carnal sense of all those supporters of his lining up to say they’d Hoover him under his desk any day of the week, scandal be damned (I no longer have the knees for that). But as a hero. He recognized the longing of so many gay people to have their partnerships taken seriously and went way out on a limb when he used his office to make waves in the culture war over marriage. For that he’ll have my undying gratitude, and unless he makes more bad moves like this one, my loyalty as well.
So there’s where I’m coming from. Maybe you want not to give any credence to what I say because I can’t come at this story objectively, but I hope you will hear me out.
The objective facts of the story seem to be these: Soon after Gavin Newsom divorced his wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, about a year and a half ago, he and his then secretary, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, hopped into the sack a couple times. And kept it a secret from her husband, Alex Tourk, Gavin’s close friend, campaign manager, political advisor, and deputy chief-of-staff. The couple have a two-year old child. Rippey-Tourk, it turns out, has a substance abuse problem. Apparently she is in AA or some other program which shares AA’s guidelines which suggest coming clean to all those in your life you have wronged as part of the recovery process. Although the cheating was momentary and appears not to have continued, she told her husband what happened. He resigned and the story leaked out.
This morning’s Chronicle has the story splashed over the front page and several inside pages. Some argue this is big news only in San Francisco, but because of recent remarks by the religious right about Nancy Pelosi’s “San Francisco values,” you just know the right is going to make more than hay out of this scandal.
Democrats, by and large, are expressing sympathy with Newsom. Dianne Feinstein, one of his strongest supporters, made a very sympathetic plea for understanding, saying she knows how hard a divorce can be on a man. She knows this from personal experience, she says.
Most people seem to be saying that the disappointment they feel stems not from knowing who he does in bed, but from the betrayal of a friendship. That’s where I came down in my first reaction.
Another group of folk want to dismiss the story out of hand. Arianna Huffington says in her blog this morning that she is fed up with this very sick fascination with people’s sex lives, wishing we could not be so easily distracted from the war and other crucial issues by tabloid journalism and our lust for dirt. Normally, I agree whole-heartedly that what other people do with their naughty parts should not distract us from serious issues, but since this story is now out and about, I can’t help but consider what a remarkable example this is of our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot. How easily we can fail ourselves.
People talk about being let down. About the importance of setting a moral standard. About stupidity.
All of these are real issues. It is astonishing how often such sex scandals keep popping up. Televangelists and politicians seem never to learn from experience, never to quite understand the consequences of living in the public eye.
But I have a slightly different take on the whole thing.
If you look between the lines and stop talking about the world as it ought to be, about duty and responsibility and judgment and setting an example, all of which are terribly important things, and look at how you live in your own body as a member of the human race, you see something different from the role you play as a public figure.
Here’s this man whose marriage has fallen apart. He’s young and virile and how hard is it to imagine he sees the failure of his marriage as a failure with larger implications. Even if it’s all the other guy’s fault; you picked him (her, in this case) and what does that say about your judgment? How many people come to divorce without serious self-doubts. And here’s this beautiful woman he works with. She shares his excitement about political life and is drawn to his charisma. She forms a bond with the man which she shares with her husband. For some reason she has fallen into drug or alcohol dependency and loses the power to think clearly, although cause and effect are not clear here. The two find themselves in circumstances where crossing the line into greater intimacy is overwhelming. Bad move. Tsk tsk. But how empty life would be if you didn’t play with fire at least once?
Go ahead and lecture me on the importance of willing the head to control the groin. I wouldn’t think of arguing with you. I would just ask you to think clearly about how much easier the task gets when your sex drive diminishes and you have had the life experience required to reflect on acting responsibility so you don’t hurt the vulnerable people around you.
Some people manage this when still quite young, but most of us have to bumble our way through a number of relationship disasters before we understand how the power of sexual desire is not something easily mastered by reason.
God knows what Ruby felt about the slip. She didn’t maintain the sexual relationship, and the word “affair” being bandied about is not appropriate. She obviously still loves her husband, the fact that this all took place when their child was a few months old notwithstanding. All three of the characters in this drama are, from all reports, much admired people. Alex seems to have not an enemy in the world. Ruby, (ignore, please, that her name sails dangerously close to the world of pornography), now works for Benefit Magazine, and has no shortage of admirers for her many talents. Gavin’s work with the homeless and other charitable efforts suggest he has a heart a mile wide.
OK, so the guy’s a horndog. He screwed up bigtime. Shot himself in the foot politically and hurt his friends, disappointed his family, and dropped quite a few notches from his hero perch.
My heart goes out to Alex. Wonder what hurts him more, the weakness of his wife or the betrayal by his friend and hero. Wonder if he and Gavin have what it takes to repair the friendship. I hope Ruby can pull herself together; hope she doesn’t weaken at the suggestion this fessing up was self-centered and she continues to regain her integrity; hope their marriage gets stronger for the challenge to it.
And Gavin? He’s not yet 40 years old, about the age Malcolm X was when he went to Mecca for the first time and realized how he had been duped by the American Black Muslim movement. We all need time to grow and stop being stupid. This may be the end of Gavin Newsom’s career. It may also be part of the fire that forges the steel of a more mature man of character and integrity.
Don’t write this guy off just yet.
Berkeley,
February 2, 2007
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