For those of us who really aren't all that interested in checking out chicks, amused tolerance works.

It's all about biology. They can't help it. They are wired to check out chicks, even when they're happily attached. The difference between you and the chicks they check out: you are there, accessible, familiar (which is generally a good thing), and perfectly satisfactory.

So a good-natured ribbing is perfectly fine. Make fun of him. Tell him, "It's ok. I understand it. You can't help millions of years of evolutionary biology. Just KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD, please, because I don't wnat to have to tell the police that my husband caused a fender bender because he was checking out some chick's butt."

Or be really obvious about checking out a good-looking guy and see what his reaction is.

Whatever the case, keep it light. He's probably feeling a little guilty about this. A little guilt is good. Too much will make you seem a joyless harridan.

This sentence gives me pause:

"But drugs weren't Elvis' only vice; what has he been pigging out on to make him so bloated?"

Is the errant "has" only a typo, or evidence that the writer believes that ELVIS LIVES?

It's painful and lonely, but it's normal, and it will most likely pass. I grew up in a similar household, and when I was in high school I started to have questions: why should only Christians go to heaven? why, when all my bunkmates at church camp felt driven to go down to the altar at the end of the service, didn't I feel the same compulsion? why was preserving sexual purity more important than alleviating poverty? And on and on and on. It only got worse in college, when I met *gasp* gay people for the first time and realized they were impossible to distinguish from everyone else, they were nice, and some of them attended my liberal Protestant church. Oh, and then I fell in love with an atheist and ended up marrying him.

All this really, really bothered my mother, especially the atheist son-in-law part. Drove her to tears and mad, raving screeds sent to me in the mail. And it was upsetting to me. I loved my parents, and yet what I was learning--all my new beliefs and values that made perfect sense to me--was driving a wedge between us. There were arguments and silences and long, tense, polite superficial conversations. And yet--

And yet, somehow, we got through it, and the realization that life is short and people who love you are priceless made it possible for these things to no longer matter. Now, when I see Mom or talk on the phone with her and one of these things comes up, one or the other of us will say, "You know how I feel about this stuff," and we let it drop and go on to a much more mutually satisfactory topic of conversation, like Mom's crazy neighbor's daughter's disastrous marriage, or loony Mike Huckabee (Can you BELIEVE that guy? Oh, yes, my mother's a Democrat *and* an evangelical.)

This distancing--it's going to happen. It's got to. It's part of growing up. For you, it might turn out to be surprisingly mild and relatively painless. Maybe your parents will amaze you by being much more tolerant of differing views than you imagined, because everything else about you will turn out just fine. Or maybe they'll react even more violently than my mother did. I'd be remiss not to caution that there's a slight chance that you'll always feel alienated, that they'll never accept your difference, but I think that's not all that likely.

Not to proselytize, but you really sound like you might be a Unitarian-Universalist unawares. When you get to college, check out your local UU congregation or fellowship and see if you fit there. Or, as another letter-writer suggests, try some liberal Christian congregations, like the UCC, the Quakers, some Episcopalian parishes...there are even socially progressive RC churches, if you're of that persuasion. Whatever you do, find a multigenerational congregation. It was comforting to me to have older folks whom I could look up to, while things weren't completely sympatico with my mother. Because you know, then, that other people question and doubt, too, and it's reassuring to know that they turned out just fine.

These whiny men's rights people--wouldn't know great humor if it bit them in the--

Myself, I always love a gratuitous joke involving the living dead.

These ads aren't going after self-aware feminists, who likely aren't binge-drinkers. They're going after party girls, whose looks and need to have fun and meet guys in bars are everything to them. I've seen lots of women with masculine features, and plenty of transsexuals, and believe me, they don't look like that. (For one thing, they're more skillful at applying makeup.) Truly, that poor soul looks like Corporal Klinger from MASH after a bender and a bad bleach job.

In an ideal world, women would be more concerned with their health than their looks. But in this screwed-up society, that's not the case, and this is the kind of public service ad that really hits people hard. Intellectually I've always known about lung cancer, but the most compelling reason I never took up smoking is because I didn't want to ruin my singing voice. Whatever works, I say.