To copy the Dixie Chicks, I am embarrassed that Garrison Keillor is from Minnesota. I am surprised that someone from my beautiful state would denigrate gay people and families with gay parents.

As a thirty-seven year old gay man, I’ve been in a great relationship with a wonderful guy for the last thirteen years. In a country filled with gay bashing and job discrimination, I’d like to see more acceptance. I’d like to see legal recognition of my relationship, since the death of either me or my partner would sink the survivor financially.

After a good main point, he veers off to suggest that gay marriage should be outlawed because it causes too much confusion... too many male in-laws. Garrison says what's best for all children is a mongamous "mixed-gender marriage", even though he himself has been married three times, cheating on his first two wives. Gay people should not be parents, unless they act straight.

Wow. I’m stunned. Such amazing hatred from someone I really liked. I thought Keillor was a liberal – someone trying to make the world a better place. I’m not sure if it’s ignorance or bad comedy, but it’s disappointing. I won’t be reading his books or supporting him in any way in the future.

Goodbye. I’ve got to go play a rugby game tomorrow. Yeah rugby… Garrison you ignorant jerk.

is Mr. Keillor's aim to be deadpan, tongue firmly planted in cheek here? I would like to think so. Regardless, it falls flat. With all of the gay baiting the right has freely indulged in over the course of the current administration's reign, I find it a little too soon for the joke.

If it were simply Mr. Keillor bombing with an unfortunately timed column, I'd be willing to let it go. However, this, combined with Salon's embrace of Camille Paglia shows very poor judgment on the part of an editorial staff who already had a long way to go towards being inclusive of, if not sensitive to, gay and lesbian content and concerns.

I may stand alone in this regard, but if not, I urge readers who feel the same to write directly to Salon's editors and let them know that this is not acceptable from what is supposed to be a liberal and progressive publication.

Nowhere did Keilor even sort of call for the outlawing of gay marriage. Learn to read, please.

He didn't even just qualify the statements about gays as stereotypical, he explictly said that is what the country thinks. And he's right. The country does accept stereotypical gay men on tv, like the funny guy on Will and Grace or Paul Lynde. But the country hasn't quite come to terms with the idea of gay marriage as normal or even that gays might be non-flamboyant persons.

"If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts."

Those were GK's own words, NOT a caricature of anybody else's thinking. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't intend to piss people off. But it was a sloppily-written unfunny piece, and the people who are paying him to be an entertaining writer deserve better.

Salon will have to give me a better reason for plunking down a subscription renewal fee if all Salon has to offer is lame syndicated crap like this GK piece, combined with the strident bullshit of "readers" like you.

"If they want to be accepted (by mainstream America) as couples and daddies....

He's talking about what the country will accept, not about he himself will accept.

But he's correct. The country is not going to accept gay couples as parents if the perception is that gay couples are more into having a good time (as seen through flamboyant clothes) than raising their kids or maintaining stable relationships.

Raising a child or maintaining a long term relationship is an entirely different matter from going out to parties and bars and trying to get laid. Going to parties and bars is what young people do and it calls for a certain flamboyance (for any sexual orientation). That's what that crazy dress is for--to attract persons of your favorite sex.

However for kids or a relationship, it's a pretty damn good idea to put yourself in the background. Your relationship or your kids ought to come first. Your kids don't want to see you in your flowery disco shirt and bell bottoms and chain with cocaine spoon--the uniform of my day. And your partner probably doesn't want to either. That's because they don't really want you to go out and attract people of your favorite sex. They want you to stay home--with them. That's how families usually are.

And that's what the article was about. Once monogamy supposedly ruled the land and children supposedly came first. That was certainly the ruling idea at the time, whatever the reality was. People in those days were supposed to put up with unhappy marriages for the sake of the kids. It wasn't all great, it wasn't perfect, but at least there was some thought for the kids.

Now freedom appears to come first and children second. The kids are now supposed to put up with things for the sake of the parents. Things like having nine or ten grandparents or meeting Dad's boyfriend. That's quite a change from the old days and it's worth commenting on and noting and maybe even worth laughing about.

But just to note these things isn't saying let's all go back to monogamy, or let's outlaw gay marriage. It's only asking for a little perspective.

given his previous comments about gay marriage.

It's not totally clear to me what exactly he thinks of gays in general, but he's certainly not a fan of the idea of gay marriage.

My God. So many readers reading so many of their own ready-made agendas into this essay.

Many charge that GK is a hypocrite for having deviated himself from the "standard arrangement," in that he is on his third marriage, but where in this essay does GK state or imply that he is the world's best father or that he has NOT screwed up or at least overly complicated his young daughter's life by burdening her with legions of step-this-and-thats? Having read a lot of Keillor, I see his condemnation here of the "new" system of adult self-absorption as including himself. It seems perfectly consistent with the self-hatred he expresses in a lot of his writing.

He says parents belong in the background (and he does not, in my reading, have a problem with gay parents--he has a problem with parents who want to be in the foreground, straight or gay) and children should hold center stage. I'm a parent; I don't have a huge problem with someone suggesting that by the time you become a parent, you should be over your need for attention and drama. You should know who you are and be at peace with that. Kids need not to be worrying about their parents; they need for parents to fade into the background while the kids themselves try to figure out who they are in time to be stable adults themselves.

Just my HO.