Based on the name ("Elwood N. Stein") of the writer and the tone of the letter to the editor on yesterday's Opinion page, I'm going to assume that it was the work of a senior citizen dismayed by the pace of change in recent decades and not the rantings of a raging bigot filled with hate. If I were drunk, and accommodating, I'd say thash okay.
Only I'm not, and it's not. But I will try to be gentle when I explain why.
Stein's thesis was reminiscent of "all the same ol' clichés" that frustrated Bob Seger in the classic rock staple. Seger sang in the voice of the redneck watching his long-haired rock-n-roll self come into a diner: "Is that a woman or a man?". Stein's version went thus:
Stein longs for a long-ago time when hisEven today, when I see people of the same sex holding hands, I wonder who is the mom or the pop. If I were adopted by Sam and Pete, I would like to know which is which.
mother kept house and raised six children, four boys and two girls. [The] father brought home the groceries.So you can see that Stein's problem goes far beyond gay couples. I'm straight, and it was pretty clear that Stein also had a problem with me.
Because I'm a single father. For the past eleven years I've "kept house . . . cooked and kept [my son] clean," all the things Stein puts in the "mom" column.
And it's not just us screw-ups with alternative lifestyles like gayness and divorce. I have a friend who is married to his first and only wife; they have three children. He's a vice-president at a local bank; she's a nurse. Because of her work schedule, I frequently see him alone at church on Sunday mornings with a baby around his neck and two kids hanging off him.
Confusing.
Is he the mom or the pop?
I'm terribly sorry, Elwood, but the world has changed for all of us: mom, pop, straight, gay, red, yellow, black, and white. Modern parents couldn't live within your carefully proscribed division of labor even if we wanted to. And we don't.
SPACEDARK
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