Mr. Keilor,

For someone who deals in yesterdays, you can be surprisingly progressive. Your work usually does a respectable job of celebrating nostalgia while simultaneously making light of it. But forgive me, for once, if I'm confused about which era you're actually living in.

My partner and I have an amazingly old-fashioned life. If you didn't see us together so often, you'd assume we'd fit right in with your Rockwell monolgues. We've been together for six years- I'm only 27, he's only 30- and are easily more stable than your average heterosexual couple. If we decided to raise a child, we'd have a lot to offer it, as we're well grounded, well educated, compassionate, sometimes boring people. By no means are we flamboyant.

Your description of "stereotypical" gay men struck a terribly dissonent chord. Maybe you're not describing people like us, but your article doesn't even suggest a world beyond flamboyance. There's no room for us in the picture you just painted. It's an old-fashioned image, but not in a positive way.

I'm a bit disappointed. You're so much more sophisticated than that. Perhaps I'm reading you wrong.

Maybe it was all a joke.

...but I will forgive GK and the editorial staff here for working under the assumption that the Salon audience was actually capable of reading something written above the high school level, where the Irony isn't necessarily noted by the shooting off of flares and the sounding of air raid sirens.

To put it bluntly, if you think the piece is homophobic, or nostalgic, or self-indulgent, you should go ask for your money back from wherever that BA on your wall is from.

PS--Prarie Home Companion is and has always been magnificently ambivalent about its putative genre. There's warmth there, sure, but also pettiness, insularity, and plain ol' human dimness, all touched on in turn.

Far be it from me to get personal or judgemental about other letter writers, but please re-read the article. I see nearly everyone raging at how Mr. Keillor hates gays, or believes the world has gone to hell because it isn't like the good old days. It ain't there, people.

Mr. Keillor contrasts the way it was when he grew up "before pizza!" and I remember those days myself. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Lake Woebegon. His description sounds superficially like the same good old days that the wingnuts are obsessed by - but read more closely. Mr. Keillor is not worshipping those days, like the mouth breathers do. He's satirizing them. Obviously, not "everyone" had the house with garage and yard, one mommy and daddy back then. He knows that, and assumes you do, too. Similarly, when he talks about the multi-ethnic classroom, he's not condemning it - like the freepers - he sounds amazed and thrilled by the radical change from the near-monoculture of his youth.

And when he pokes fun at the complexities of serial monogamist marriages - hey, he's entitled. He's been there himself. It's not hypocrisy, it's experience. By extending the relative nomenclature analogy to GLBT marriages, why do you assume he's opposed to them? Read it again. Figure it out.

Mr. Keillor isn't condemning the way the US has changed, he's embracing it, in his own dryly humorous way.

It's too bad so many of you just use his columns to get your mad on. Go read an article that talks about Israel, and flame about it, for a change.

I don't think it is entirely satire b/c of his penchant for glorifying "down-homeness." If it were meant to be, he is rubbing to close to stereotypes that his whole schtick has been built upon and thus he fails.

Admittedly, Keillor is too smart to be entirely serious about this commentary, but there is enough of a kernel of truth in it (the fact that it resonates with me on some level, for instance) that it crosses the line from satire's fantasy realm (ala Swift) and becomes didactic rather than ironic.

So, if it is meant to be purely satire...it is not very good.

Oh Garrison,

I was born in St Paul and grew up in its suburbs, a child of the type of selfless parents you extol. Those parents, Catholic sloggers with a Puritan work ethic, dutifully drove me to school every morning past all the nice houses on Summit Avenue. So I know where you're coming from, really. I get it.

I'm not so humorless as to miss the deliberateness of your curmudgeonly shtick. You've really topped yourself, though, lamenting the perfect heterosexual monogamous past that never was, and using gay men as a foil for self-absorption, particularly given your own outsize accomplishments and corresponding ego! I only fear that some of your readers will miss how firmly your tongue is planted in your cheek.

I've since fled to godless liberal homosexual San Francisco, where every man -- especially formerly Midwestern gay men -- takes himself way too seriously and sees fit to write letters to the editor when a favorite columnist twists his nipple. However, few of those men wear chartreuse pants or can afford a fancy striped sofa; given rents around here they're probably sleeping on it. Fashionable gay men with children? Only if the latest couture collection includes Pirate Booty crumbs and spit-up formula.

"Nature" only cares about "breeding adults"; both infants and elderly are usually at risk of death in the event life sustaining resources become scarce. (check out a few PBS documentaries on either animals or humans)As far as nature is concerned, once you are no longer breeding you are toast (check out the sex life of salmon or day flies, most efficient examples).

It is only the "cultural" habits of our various species (and abundance of resources)which foster long life. In most human cultures, elderly people have been honored and venerated, but in hard times the elderly get sent out to sea on a boat or left in the snow.

I too am a child from Mr. Keillor's era and in his defense, life was so different then, slower, expectations were so different of all generations and people than they are now. While I am happy Mr. K had a happy time, I would hate to go back to the 50's or earlier (this is the generation of GWB!!) There were horrible taboos about everything and we were much crueler to each other than now in personal ways. Homosexuality didn't exist, divorce and marriage outside your religion (in some cases sect specific), race or ethnic background "just was not done" and would create horrific ramifications in the family or community. Pregnant girls were sent away to give birth in shame. Beating children and women was normal. Birth control and abortion were illegal or not available. Racial segregation and discrimination were institutionalized and NORMAL in many parts of the country and white males ruled the world with a heavy hand (alas they still do).

I have heard too many horror stories from gay and lesbian friends about the agonies in admitting their sexuality...for heaven's sake one's developing sexuality is usually relished and enjoyed certainly by the individual, if not society. Why should young gay and lesbian kids be made to feel ashamed of their natural development? It makes no sense.

As to marriage and parenthood, why anyone would want to be married is beyond me, marriage is hard, regardless of genders and is not for the faint of heart! Parenthood, too, is hard and I would only recommend it as one way to grandparenthood, which is where I want to live the rest of my life! Happy to be in 2007, sure hope there is 2008+. wild and crazy gramma ps, David Elder's piece is priceless!