Whoever denies even one of my sheep, woe unto him. If even one Sacrament is denied, then why not all of them? I thought the Sacraments were given to all.
Perhaps we should check the lists again and see who else is excluded.
Perhaps those who twitter, tweak and twist the words of Holy Writ to their own meanings should be excluded.

-Mireya.

i am also amazed that he charmed his way into 3 marriages.

I pity his wives. Evidently they are of the ‘damsel in distress’ type, liable to be swept off their feet at a moment’s notice by suspicious chastity-destroying Charlatans, and as such need to be protected by loveless marriages such as this dude’s. Because of course that’s so much better than OHMIGAWSH ACTUALLY CHOOSING WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR PRIVATE PARTS!!!

/sarcasm.

Um…no. It wouldn’t. You’ve got it bass-ackwards, Skippy. You’re confusing the protection racket the patriarchal culture is currently running with actual protection.

Say what?

I have better things to do than work out what particular work of Shelley’s he’s drawing from, but I have a terrible suspicion that it’s Prometheus Unbound. That’s right, kids: Mr. Schulman sees Married Man as the carrion-picked Titan, the great hero of humanity, the bearer of language and free will and music and tragedy. I bet his wife gets a kick out of that act.

Fully agree with everyone else’s objections to this guy. Just thought I’d wade in on behalf of misappropriated second-generation Romantics everywhere.”

==========

THANK YOU! I found this whole argument to be hilarious and left me with the best WTF face ever for the year. But I have to say that when he dragged dear ol’ Shelley into the mix, I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about! I’m so glad that someone else defended him (Shelley, not Schulman) because yeah…so not the epitome of a “normal” heterosexual married life. Besides the fact that he didn’t stick around with his first wife (after she told him she didn’t want him playing with other pudenda…and she was pretty crazy anyway), he took off for the one girl you don’t take down the aisle because her mommy and daddy said so. And after that, he was hardly faithful (but that was free love, man!) and there’s a pretty good chance that he was playing for both teams at times anyway. Especially once Byron stepped into the picture. Talk about Romantic! I just love those guys!

But Schulman…dude’s off his rocker. Gotta love the fundies who shoot the rest of their teammates in the foot with the crazy shit they say. This should ensure that the anti-gay marriage players won’t be listened to for much longer.

Aside from that, you don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall allowing you to complain about how the old ball and chain is what’s preventing you from having crazy monkey sex with nymphomaniac gymnasts or whatever, should crazy monkey sex qua crazy monkey sex be the actual source of your vexation (as opposed to the lack thereof (which in itself is another overarching issue with myriad ramifications, fascinating to be sure but not apropos for such a fatuous and jejune sentence which was written both to annoy and to mock the sort of pompous prolix pontification that makes one wish one could pull some Marshall McLuhan analogue from behind a movie poster to force some perspective on one’s interlocutor ter die sumendum post cibum. Etiam videte, quam porcus ille silvaticus lotam comederit glandem.)), dig?

Schulman’s argument is not only deeply ignorant of women’s sexuality, but also of the dynamics of human relationships in the 21st century. Bill’s daughter wouldn’t have a relationship with Tommy for a number of reasons:
1) Tommy, as a mature gay man, probably has no sexual interest in his ex-lover’s daughter.
2) Even if Tommy and Bill were both bisexual, making subsequent relationships with women plausible, Bill’s daughter would probably not have much sexual attraction toward a man her father’s age as she is in her sexual prime. Men over forty are actually on a sexual decline. Sexual incompatibility ensues.
3) What prevents my brother from engaging in sexual relationships with my father’s high school girlfriends? These liasons are not protected by kinship taboos, but that doesn’t make them likely to happen.
4) To be really honest with ourselves here, it’s simply unlikely that any of us will ever run into someone our parents dated before they met and made us. It’s not that it’s frowned upon–rather, we tend to enter into relationships with people of similar class, background, and age as ourselves.
5) And if Bill’s daughter did find herself in a provocative setting with her father’s ex and
a) she knew Tommy as her father’s ex, she’d probably walk away from it out of respect for her father’s feelings about Tommy, who’d do the same.
b) she didn’t know Tommy was her father’s ex (nor he that she’s Bill’s daughter), there will eventually be a bit of a sitcom situation to deal with, won’t there?

In all, I suppose I simply find Schulman’s argument to deal with an entirely archaic perspective on marriage, one that has fallen almost entirely into obscurity in any place in which there is a question of the validity of same-sex marriages. Marriage is not about the woman as property anymore, and it has not been for a long time.

Now, if I had my way, my husband and I would be unmarried, living in “sin.” Unfortunately the United States Armed Forces are lagging a bit on these modern concepts, like “not discriminating against gay people” and “long-term relationships with no need for patriarchal validation” and all of that. But they are working on it. Until then, we’re happy to be married. Being married means we get to be together. And that’s what marriage should really be about, isn’t it? Not duty, not property–just voluntary love and devotion, for the long haul.