Jeffrey McManus

In addition to being a bore, Garrison Keillor has some pretty messed-up ideas. Excellent deconstruction by columnist Dan Savage here. Savage has a dog in this hunt (he’s a gay parent who wrote a terrific and funny book about the experience). But he points out that the myth that only male-female parents are legitimate is deathly serious: in a world in which this kind of bigotry is permitted to fester, you see outcomes like the Michigan law which denies health benefits to families with same-sex parents.

Savage also flirts with, but doesn’t really expound upon, something that I wish would be brought up more often when we talk about how the government/church tries to control who we’re allowed to marry: the "nuclear family" is an Eisenhower-era invention. It’s not the natural state of human affairs. Throughout history we’ve always had a couple of parents (or not), eight or ten siblings or cousins, and fifteen crazy uncles and aunts lurking in the background. At no point was any child confused by this state of affairs.

Update: Keillor posted a rather mealy-mouthed apology which Dan Savage dismantles here.

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