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"Being gay is like belonging to an 'exclusive club.' I just worry that the drive to marry will end up kind of chipping away at the culture."

That's a quote from Clint Wolbert, in a NYT article titled "Gay Couples Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag." I wasn't going to blog that article, but I went back to it today when it was cited as the solution to a secondary puzzle within the big puzzle I asked for help about here. That is, I was getting a few visitors who were searching for the name Clint Wolbert ? someone I didn't remember ever hearing of though my blog came up second on these searches. My update explaining the source of the blog traffic brought Wolbert to the blog comments over there, where he wrote:

My point in the article was that gay people should acknowledge that marriage is a double edged sword. It's great to have the option to marry. Some day far away I'll probably avail myself of it. But the more gay culture takes on the trappings of heterosexual normalcy, the less distinct the culture will be. And I like the culture.

The photographer and I were talking about this subject and he equated it to when Jackie Robinson, et. al. were invited to participate in major league baseball. It's great, a watershed, a step in the right direction. But that meant the community built around the Negro Leagues was going to disappear. That's a net positive, but only because the benefit outweighed the detriment. The detriment did in fact exist.

It's the same with gay marriage. Nothing is black and white. It's great that gay people can marry, and it's great that more gay people have these rights in the US now than ever before. But people should be aware that gay marriage comes at a price to the community. (A price that's worth paying, definitely, but still, it's a price).

It's tough to capture that sentiment in a sound bite.

I thought it was cool that he stopped by, but I'm not writing a separate post merely to marvel at the coolness of blogging. I wanted to set up a place to talk about the actual issue. I'm glad Wolbert expanded on his point, because, reading the article, I assumed he was like those gay activists who gave Andrew Sullivan hell years ago for arguing in favor of gay marriage. It used to be much more common to expect gay people to be radical and to critique conventional society ? not to want to join it.

ADDED: I'm trying to find video of the great debate that Sullivan (and Norah Vincent) had with Richard Goldstein and Carmen Vasquez, but I did find this 2002 article by Camille Paglia that describes it.

Full post as published by Althouse on June 15, 2008 (boomark / email).