More on my so-called gratuitous intimate life

What a brave, honest and personal column, Craig, in sharp contrast to so many narrow-minded, uneducated and often hateful contributions to the DJ opinion page! You will never know how many you have helped and encouraged today, including friends of my own family, both single ones and in partnership, to whom I’ll be happy to forward your piece. When will we learn to accept one another, regardless of skin color, background, religion or lack thereof, and yes, personal feelings. On behalf of so many I know, - thank you, Craig!

Craig - thank you for a column that has clearly been a subject of your discomfort with my comment. I understand that your relationship is consistent with the law of the land. Since you frequently mention that we should accept one another without prejudice, you will agree that it was, and is still not, easy for everyone to accept such a marriage and then be at risk being called a homophobe. My comment was directed at your intimate bedroom activity which I feel even today is gratuitous in the context of an otherwise fine article. I bear no hard feelings toward you and I always appreciate your well-written, thoughtful columns. Merry Christmas!

I’d like to holler a shout-out for the right of every couple to share the loveliness of being in a partnership, whether it’s dancing close in the living room together or snuggling up with our dogs at the end of the day. And—yes—Craig’s point about the prejudice against sharing “gratuitous intimate life” details is well-founded, the underlying the assumption that people who are gay should keep their lives to themselves, as if the sharing of such lives would muddy the waters of our culture. He’s right—it’s just wrong to impose a “be quiet about that” ethic on couples. Period. But there’s a finer point, and that is, intimacy-resistance and intimacy-phobia threads through our whole culture. Gay, straight, or other. My husband and I are often singled out as a couple who shouldn’t be talking about our love life, our closeness. If I think about this politically, it’s the arc of why so many folks line up on the constraining side of sexual politics. Early in my adulthood I ran a family planning clinic, and what was so telling about that experience was parents’ relationship to their young adults’ sexuality. Parents would often control where their kids went to school, who their kids hung out with, what their kids chose for a career—even sometimes who their grown kid was “allowed” to marry—but they could not, for the life of them, control who their kid was aroused and moved by. And it often drove them nuts, trying to impose their own ethic on another human being. That control issue absolutely carries over into peoples’ ideas of who gets to love and who gets to be open about it. But the truth is, everyone has the right to their own sensual arc. We were invented that way: as unique and individual human beings, moved by love in the ways we’re moved. I feel that intimacy is often under a shroud in our society—even in the midst of so much internet permissiveness—so much so, that in our daily lives, there’s a recoiling of recognizing that couples are sexual and intimate, and should be, as it’s what binds us. It’s what we share with each other that we don’t share with the rest of the world. So, whether it’s the prejudice of streaming shows that feature the twenty-somethings as sexual, and the fifty-somethings as beyond that arc; whether it’s the ageist idea that our mother doesn’t have the right to another intimate relationship after our father dies; or whether it’s a prejudice that—gay or straight—we shouldn’t be talking in public about being close with our husband or wife, all of it is a stamping out of the glue that keeps us sweet on each other. There’s that old adage we used to repeat in our twenties, “If every couple was having more sex, the world would be a much more peaceful place.” And though that was said in jest, there’s something under that: that intimacy is good. It’s good for our couple-ships, it’s good for our hearts and bodies, it’s a closeness that reaches beyond the edge of the bed and permeates all of our days. And that makes it good for our culture. We’re blessed to have it, we’re blessed to build it and nurture those fires through the decades that lead us to devotion. Its presence in our culture should be celebrated, not invisibilized.

Love is love is love is love. Partners hold each other up and highlight each other, cuddle with each other and dance close in the living room. That’s love. And we’re lucky to live in a time where we have the right and the privilege to share who we are—no matter what our orientation or backgrounds or explorations.

Acceptance and sharing love with others is entirely appropriate today... actually, it is a core value that should guide us every day.

Today, we celebrate the birth of someone who brought a message of loving others unconditionally... a unique message that was unlike any principle, prophecy or preaching before or after his time.

Now that it is our time... we would do well to keep that two-thousand-year-old message in our hearts wherever life takes us and share it with everyone we meet.

Thank you Craig, for lifting up love and true partnership. Many blessings and Happy New Year to you and your family.