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From: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: "Breeding Public" Redefined
Message-ID: <29@spdcc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 19:08:45 EST
Article-I.D.: spdcc.29
Posted: Fri Mar  7 19:08:45 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Mar-86 23:37:56 EST
References: <1737@bbncca.ARPA>
Reply-To: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Comsulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 26

I like stories like these because they show graphically how inadequate
labels are past a certain point, and also how a label of self-identification
like "gay" really doesn't say beans about how you should live your life.
It's a statement of belonging; of saying, "I have something deeply in
common with these people", but the limits on your behavior are self-
imposed, and need not and should not necessarily follow the "party line".
More power to these people, I say.

>My reaction was that these people must have iron emotional constitution ...
>this after being told about the wedding pictures that were shown on the
>program.  The two men met through a mutual friend who was a lover of one of
>them.  Even after the first couple broke up and the fellow started going
>out with his ex-lover's friend, the deposed lover was the best man at the
>wedding.  Either a remarkable lack of bad feeling or very good at hiding it.

In my experience, when gay male relationships break up, the split is more likely
to be without acrimony than the typical married couple.  I know lots of
couples who have separated yet still remain on amiable terms.  I don't
think this is solely because an institution like marriage holds mismatched
people together for long enough that when the split arrives, the relationship
is irreparably damaged, because I see this same disinclination to remain
friends between unmarried men and women who were formely lovers.
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{bbncca,bbnccv,harvard}!spdcc!dyer