Monday musings

So all homo's, non-straights and other 'others' are fly-by-night, no strings-attached, on-night-stand people? Not so: the Miami Pride festival of last weekend celebrated 'legacy couples' who had been together longer than most of the attendees had been alive. This fantastic website showcases them in a series of timeline photographs; sadly there was a suspicious lack of women or transgendered people or even a bisexual couple who had happened to end up with a two-gendered partnership. Visibility much?

Now, crime prevention (more on this anon from an article in The Economist), but would be criminals are being dissuaded by photographs of what they might look like after jail time. With 25% of the world's incarcerated population in the USA, a third of whom will never be released, what one might look like after being imprisoned could be last concern of the person tempted to act illegally. I would worry about missing out on nice shoes, not seeing the latest movies, never flying to Asia, having to breach my no-public-nudity clause in the group showers. But then that's just me...

Gay marriage vs polygamy: apart from the misprint in the final paragraph, I think it a great article but which fails to note that polyamory (including polygyny and polygamy) are tricky (or wrong depending on your viewpoint) as they encourage, sanction, endorse, require sharing of one's body sexually with more than one person and your emotions, love, support, money, everything with more than one person. Now to me that seems like a whole heap of unnecessary trouble: maybe you get a few people to care for you when you are ill, but what if there is a sick person, a bereaved person, someone in labour all at the same time - who do you support? Who gets priority? There will have to be favourites, you will have to choose. Someone gets left out and pissed off. Trouble starts. Not worth it. Find one person, stick with them, make it work, good luck. Or rely on yourself, have others in your lives for the things you cannot do alone, but stay a single unit, no commitment to any one person or a group - that way madness lies.