Thanks for the link to the Dan Savage blog post. It's worth reading.

Before reading this article, the highlight of my year was seeing a live broadcast of PHC in St. Louis. It was a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After reading this article, I feel so disappointed. Someone who I thought I knew, I didn't know at all.

Please tell me I'm wrong about you, Garrison. I'm a gay parent and we even had the name "Garrison" on our short list of names for our son. I'm tremendously relieved to tell you we chose another name.

If this was satire, it wasn't funny.

and where in the world do you come up with the notion that homosexuals are the reason behind family structures appearing more complex now than when you were growing up? this only furthers the obvious, that while you were busy making up stories about a town where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average, you were living in a world that you only believed when you were the teller of the tales. you have missed a lot of progress in your creative isolation. your vision of a land lined with manicured lawns and a warm dinner by 6 has been overpowered by a reality of a society where women are still fighting for the acceptance and acknowledgment of the contributions and strength they have given to every single one of us. men and women alike are more comfortable expressing the core of who they are, no matter if it fits into the assigned female mom, male dad roles that you would place them in. and unfortunately, our children through no fault of their own, but through the selfish greed of the older generations, are being treated as if they are well bellow average. if there are solid, warm, caring people that are in my life by blood or by choice that want to be a part of my family and provide love and acceptance to the children in my family, again by blood or by choice, why would i turn them down? because it will be more difficult for you to write tax breaks that will treat our family structure on an equal level as that of your family? because you won't know who to talk to at the PTA meeting when 15 of us show up to contribute to the school's activities? because you will have to be pushed into seeing that this is not a new cultural phenomenon at all? i hate to break it to you, but your american dream ideal household is way more of an anomaly than the thanksgiving table that you described.

we are natural beings, animals even. and as a species it is one of our main purposes to procreate in order to sustain the species. but you and i both know that especially as americans, we are doing a very poor job of this. we are sending our young into other parts of the world in order to destroy infrastructures and more importantly lives. and i have heard very few stories of mannequins standing in the doorways waving their young goodbye without emotion as they prepare to leave for battle, quite possibly for the last time. instead i hear repeated stories of childless parents whose heart wrenching cries fall silent to the ones that took their children away to begin with. at what age does nature stop caring about us, mr. keillor? it was my understanding that we are all responsible for our own actions and lives while we are here. and the last time i checked, the way i treated another person in some way impacted them, be it good or bad. the cycle of nature might not care about the fact that your article has upset me enough to write a response, however that doesn't mean that we do not force nature to care about our emotions in other ways. what do you think is behind the war that you are so willing to speak out against? pure emotions. of the older people. nature cares, mr. keillor. and promoting this type of self imposed ignorance is only fuelling it. nature has always called us to pack together, in a village or a family, in order to sustain. we will never be able to seperate from this need. the type of family structure that you have credited the homosexuals with bringing back, is not ours to claim. and while we do have a solid history of bringing retro fashions back, especially when they are practical, i'm afraid that the queer community just can't take complete credit for this one. while you were off making a name for yourself, many of us were dealing with the changes in a global economy where most of us still need to have multiple jobs, don't have health care, have no choice but to place our kids with relatives or strangers while we bus to our jobs, are constantly fighting creditors just to pay our bills, and still aren't getting ahead. in order to survive, we have learned to rely on each other. because while we've been told that we should really just care about keeping the babies alive and making the money, most of us are more concerned with providing a safe and good home for all of our loved ones, including our children. only the ones of us that struck wealth were able to isolate from these complicated packs. again, i congratulate you for being one of the chosen ones to have experienced this. but the reality is that we as humans have a long line of having multi-tiered, far reaching family foundations that your straight up and down family tree will not find root in.

and yes, the economics of the united states has also meant that a majority of the suburbs that the whites fled towards before you were born have now become mixed with all different races and nationalities. if stepping into a classroom full of children of mixed nationalities, cultures, and skin color makes you long for your glory days of white washed schools, so be it. but please don't pat yourself on the back when you decide to play up stories of cowboys and say that the children are "better" since they met you. how so? because they can say "clip clop" now?? it's great that you showed them a little of your history and exposed them to your talent as a storyteller while promoting literacy in a school system that is struggling to hang onto any and all resources for our childrens' education. what scares the hell out of me is the notion that you put forth in this article that these children were so very blessed to have come across the pinnacle of a bona fide american when you stepped into their classroom. and that you spent the entire article pointing out how they, their families, their backgrounds, and the assumed sexual orientation of all involved was somehow contributing to a deterioration of our society that your bubblewrapped experience can't even fathom tolerating, let alone accepting. for a long time i had thought you would be an interesting person to invite over for supper. and i had looked forward to hearing your tales. but if you would sit there judging my family and our love so harshly, i'd rather save the pie for the string of my chosen family members that will be coming to the table later.