When the United States Congress debated the so-called Marriage Protection Act back in 1996, lucky moi had the privilege of attending the House subcommittee hearings. The question was whether same-s.e.x marriages should be banned on a federal level.

Cynic that I am, I support gay marriages. This puts me in the minority, but okay. So be it. My feeling is that if any two people are actually in love (i.e., insane) enough to want to commit to spend their entire lives together-if they're actually willing to a.s.sume legal and financial responsibility for each other until death do them part-well then, I say give 'em as much rope as they need. It's a tough, lonely life, and I don't believe in begrudging anybody a shot at some happiness and comfort. Besides, why should straight folks be the only ones who get to fill out joint income-tax forms, run up shared credit-card debt, visit each other in the intensive-care wards, and inherit each other's c.r.a.ppy furniture?

Gay marriage actually benefits straight gals, too. Some leaders who oppose gay marriage also support the c.o.c.kamamie idea of "converting" gay men to heteros.e.xuality. Well, as any hetero-femme can tell you, dating a closeted gay guy is no f.u.c.king picnic. Compelling h.o.m.os.e.xuals to live as straights is not doing us gals any favors. Unless both parties are really as.e.xual, it's frustrating and humiliating and painful for everyone involved. Why put two people through that? The more that all loving partnerships can flourish in an atmosphere of truth, honesty, and acceptance, the better for everyone in the long run.

My grandmother, incidently, was a supporter of gay marriage, too-specifically, lesbian weddings. She seemed to think that lesbian weddings might be a good antidote to the man shortage in the Century Village retirement community in West Palm Beach, Florida. "So, what's wrong with a little lesbian wedding?" she once said. "I mean, what else are we elderly widows supposed to do for entertainment, once all the men have died off? This way, we could have a lot of parties and drink gin."

Congress, however, clearly doesn't share my grandmother's idea of progressive social policy.

At the time that the hearings on gay marriage took place, Newt Gingrich was riding high as the Speaker of the House. As you may guess, the proceedings were a baccha.n.a.lia of bombast, h.o.m.ophobia, and Bible thumping. Had the gasbags involved not had any real power-and had they perhaps had the imagination to speak in Monty Python accents (which make any bureaucratic proceeding infinitely more palatable)-they actually could have provided the taxpayers with a fine afternoon of comic entertainment. (I've become convinced that if we don't regard politics as a theater of the absurd, we're headed for a coronary.) But, instead, I listened to a legion of extremely serious politicians and "experts," some of whom had a truly impressive track record of divorce and adultery themselves, testify that the "sanct.i.ty" of marriage would be destroyed if lesbians and gays were legally allowed to set up house. Apparently, heteros.e.xual marriage only works if n.o.body else is allowed to copy it. According to pros such as then-California Congressman Bob Dornan, a successful marriage does not depend upon the love and commitment between the wife and husband, but upon keeping couples named Frederica and Ginger from registering for gravy boats.

Ma.s.sachusetts Representative Barney Frank, bless his openly gay heart, captured this absurdity the best. At one point he asked the committee, "Are straight marriages so fragile that if me and my partner get married, it will cause your own relationships to fall apart?"

Strange as it was, a lot of people at the hearing actually seemed to think yes.

And this is a dirty little truth that I think deserves to be acknowledged: Policymakers seem to oppose gay marriages because they, themselves, are miserable, because their own marriages are a fragile, messy sham. Why else would they begrudge two people the right to set up an enduring partnership together? Why else would they fear their own choices will be denigrated and threatened? I mean, face it: When you're truly in love, you want the whole world to be in love with you. You feel giddy and romantic and generous. You fix people up. You're insufferably jolly-they could pour you over a waffle.

It's only when your own relationship is on the rocks, when your own s.e.xuality is contorted and troubled, that you get miserly and mean-that you try to sabotage other couples, that you feel compelled to increase your own sense of importance through sanctimony, that you adopt the hooray-for-me, f.u.c.k-everybody-else syndrome that seems endemic to some super-right-wing conservatives.

Sure, the so-called religious activists say they're enforcing the tenets of the Bible. But the Bible (which some of us silly folks read more as a treatise on justice, love, mercy, and redemption than on retribution) has far more numerous and d.a.m.ning prohibitions against adultery than against h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Heck, adultery even made the Top Ten list of all G.o.d's Commandments, while the first pa.s.sage that's usually cited against h.o.m.os.e.xuality remains buried somewhere in Leviticus.

And adultery is certainly far more threatening to marriage than Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche making kissy-kissy in Hollywood. If my husband sleeps with Mary Ann, it's far more destructive to my family than if Gilligan makes a pa.s.s at him and my husband says he isn't interested. So hel-lo? Where is the ruckus against adultery? I don't see the "family-values" folks railing against adultery nearly so much as against h.o.m.os.e.xuality. Perhaps that's because when guys like Newt Gingrich or Henry Hyde haven't been railing about the decline of family values, they've been busy cheating on their spouses.

Also, if we're going to get really literal here, the Bible also says that anyone who curses their father or mother should be put to death. Whoops! I guess there goes the entire population of teenagers! And the Bible also says: Hit your father or mother and you get put to death. Well, say sayonara to the toddlers during their terrible twos!

Of course, people like Congressman d.i.c.k Armey have insisted that they oppose h.o.m.os.e.xual marriage because gay s.e.x is a "disease," "promiscuous," and an "unnatrual perversion."

But c'mon. Anybody who's married will tell you: Marriage ain't about s.e.x. In fact, nothing supposedly puts the kabash on a robust s.e.x life faster than marriage. I mean, we've all heard the old joke: Q: How do you stop a girl from having s.e.x?

A: Marry her.

So if bigots are truly opposed to gay s.e.x, shouldn't they, more than anyone else, endorse gay marriage? I mean, what better antidote to supposed gay promiscuity? Let Adam and Steve be legally required to remain monogamous as they argue about the mortgage, then see how hot and h.o.r.n.y they feel! Let Ada and Eve adopt a baby, then see if they still have the energy left to hit the girlie bars.

People also say they oppose gay marriage because: Cripes! What about the children? Children can't be allowed to see Jason with two daddies! That would send the message that gay s.e.x is okay!

Well, let's remember one absolutely critical thing about childhood, please. Kids, no matter what their age, are absolutely loath to think about their parents-gay or straight-having s.e.x.

I mean, just try thinking about it right now: Eewwww, right?

Nothing is more repulsive. Even if you're say, twenty-seven.

Besides, kids are narcissists. Kids believe that their parents exist for one reason only: to provide them with undivided attention twenty-four hours a day. They don't give a s.h.i.t about grown-ups' s.e.x lives. Kids want an audience.

If little kids do know "where babies come from," most prefer to live with the happy illusion that their parents had s.e.x exactly the number of times it took to make them and their siblings-and no more. o.r.g.a.s.m, sodomy laws, h.o.m.os.e.xual feelings-all of this is waaaay off their radar. And this is not going to change if they have two mommies instead of one, or if "Aunt Bill" and "Uncle Bruce" take 'em to Disneyland every Christmas.

All kids really want to know is that they are not weirdos. If Heather Has Two Mommies is on their bookshelf , it's not going to inspire them to start imagining Mary Ann and Ginger gettin' hot 'n' heavy by the lagoon. But, if they do have two mommies, it may provide them with a little rea.s.surance that they're okay. And this is important. Remember, when you're a kid, you can feel like an outcast if you bring meatloaf for lunch when all the other kids have bologna. It doesn't take much in second grade to earn you the nickname "Freakazoid."

Realize this, and the argument that gay marriage will "corrupt" children flies out the window, too.

No, the opposition to gay marriage is not really about s.e.x, "religious morality," or protecting children. If you ask me, frankly, I think it's about insecurity, and maybe even a little jealousy.

Because deep, deep down in their hearts, some heteros.e.xuals actually suspect that gay people have it easier. Sure, gay folks have to put up with violence, discrimination, and social ostracism, but hey: They don't have to spend the rest of their lives with members of the opposite s.e.x.

For some straight people, heteros.e.xuality is actually far more of a headache than they'll admit.

Yeah, there's l.u.s.t and instant chemistry. But throughout history, men and women have been engaged in a holy war known as the Battle of the s.e.xes. To some degree, we've been raised to view each other as the enemy. Certainly, men have been encouraged to f.u.c.k as many women as possible, while women have been encouraged to "get" a man to marry us and settle down. Talk about conflicting agendas. And until very recently in the West, our roles were greatly codified religiously, socially, economically, and s.e.xually-and grossly unequal. In most places, they still are.

Plus, men and women often perceive each other as predatory and alien. I mean, why else would Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus become a bestseller? Why else are there humorous self-help books advising women to use dog-training techniques on their boyfriends? Just try selling something like that to lesbians. h.e.l.l, try selling The Rules to lesbians. Or take the De Beers TV commercial for a diamond engagement ring. It shows the silhouette of a man who is getting ready to place an enormous rock on his fiancee's finger-his fiancee whom the ad describes as an exquisitely "incomprehensible creature." Oh boy. An incomprehensible creature. Just whom I'd want to spend the rest of my life with.

And listen to straight people in bars.

The guys: "Augh! Women! You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em! We will never understand women."

And from the girls: "Guys are dogs. They will never be like your girlfriends. So you've got to remember not to expect too much."

Add to this the fact that our s.e.xual peaks are separated by eighteen years, and our s.e.xual responsiveness is vastly different, and it's a miracle that men and women have gotten together at all in the past fifteen thousand years. And yet, to this very day, we're expected to build lifelong partnerships together. We're told, in fact, that the very foundation of our society and the future of our species depends upon it. Oh. Great. No pressure there.

So, when I hear straight guys being h.o.m.ophobic a.s.sholes, what I really hear is envy. Beneath their words, I hear their resentment and frustration over having to relate to us chicks. It's like: Hey, we have to put up with those stupid b.i.t.c.hes, with all their nagging and irrational demands and expectations. We have to try and be macho but also keep our pants zipped and watch our mouths and worry about p.i.s.sin' them off. We can't have s.e.x with whomever we want, wherever we want-at least without paying a price for it. Why the h.e.l.l should the gay guys get off so easy? They want the benefits of being married? Let 'em marry a chick, like I did!

And when I hear straight women denigrate lesbians, the subtext I often hear is their own dissatisfaction with men: Hey, of course I'd prefer to share a household with my friend Sharon, who really understands me-rather than this King of Flatulence who watches football all day and whose idea of a romantic gesture is to change the oil in my Subaru. But we all make compromises. Why can't these women get with the program the way I did?

And listening to the right-wing wackos at the gay-marriage hearings, this is what I heard, too: fear and jealousy and romantic dissatisfaction. And so did my man Barney Frank.

Not that any of this justifies rampant heteros.e.xism, gay-bashing, or discrimination, of course.

But the way I see it, when it comes to combating discrimination, any insights into the opposition can be a real power tool.

So next time some moron rails against "lezzies and perverts" getting married, I say we just go, "Wow. Your own love life must suck. Otherwise, you wouldn't be so threatened by anyone else's."

This could stun them into a silence. Or make them vein-popping mad. Either way: points for our team.

I suppose we could remind them, too, that committed gay couples are actually no different from straight couples in the long run. Long-term relationships all have their hopes and disappointments, neuroses and challenges. n.o.body is immune to heartache.

But nah. Let 'em suffer. Let their own fear and ignorance work against 'em. Let 'em believe deep down inside that lesbians really do have it better.

Chapter 13.

We Are the Fashion Police Laugh and the world laughs with you.

Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.

-LAURIE KUSLANSKY I recently attended a women's networking dinner in Virginia where a bevy of very hip, very multicultural, very accomplished professional gals sat around discussing-you guessed it-golf.

That's right, golf. As in: the game that mostly white guys with zero fashion sense play. As in: take the stick, hit the ball, and try to get it in the hole-eighteen f.u.c.king times in a row. As in: Zzzzzzzzz...

Golf holds only one point of interest for me, and that's the caddy. Get some hot young college buck to follow me around schlepping my stuff, and hey, we can talk. Thing is, he'll have to do this off the green, too. (In fact, here's an idea for "family-values" advocates who tee off every Sunday: If they really want to help American families, why not send their caddies to help out new parents once in a while? G.o.ddess knows that a new mom could use an extra pair of helping hands.) But anyway: While none of the women at the dinner were under the illusion that golf was actually interesting, more than a few had discovered that learning to play golf const.i.tuted a serious career move.

Said a woman named Diane, who'd launched her own business, "I've discovered that all the deals are being cut on the fairway, not in the boardroom. If I want to play with the Big Boys, I have to play golf with them."

"It's what the men in my office play, too," said a woman named Charlie, in dreadlocks. "If you want to get ahead, it helps to be a golfer."

And so, in the middle of the dinner party, these women began trading notes on stuff like t.i.tanium-headed drivers, nine-irons, and mulligans.

Dear G.o.ddess. Couldn't we just f.u.c.k our way to the top like we used to?

Look, we women need a serious Old Girls' Network-and we need it fast. Otherwise, we're going to have to spend our lives kissing up to the good ol' boys by playing golf-a game that's so dumb, players actually brag about their handicaps.

We gals need some serious, universal methods of female bond-ing-personally and professionally. Yeah, the term sisterhood inspires some eye rolling among us cynical chicks. After all, we know that sisters can claw each other's eyes out over the last piece of blueberry pie just as easily as they can share it. Unlike our feminist fore-mothers, we're under no illusions: Just because somebody has a t.w.a.t doesn't automatically mean she's our ally.

We know how hard women can be on each other. My grandma, in fact, used to say that we women are harder on each other than anybody else-and in some cases, Girl, ain't that the truth.

From Day One in the playground, girls police each other with a ferocity that's better suited to a gulag than to a swing set. "Eew, Donna's wearing purple! Eew! Melissa drinks tomato juice! Eew! Keisha's playing with the pigeons! Eew! Look everybody!" This establishes a Greek chorus of social judgment that may get tempered with age but that can last, frankly, until our funerals. ("Good G.o.d! She chose to be buried in that?") It's not just professional misogynists like Joan Rivers or Phyllis Schlafly who bat against the home team. Plenty of good-hearted gals take swings at other women without even realizing it: If I had thighs as big as that woman's, they say, I would not be wearing biking shorts.

Ouch. That woman's do is sooo twenty years ago.

Somebody should tell her that miniskirts are no longer cute on someone her age.

We women are only too highly attuned to whose shoes work with her outfit, to who's having a bad hair day, to who's gained six pounds and is wearing fake b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As a comedian wrote in "One Hundred Reasons Why It's Great to Be a Guy," "When you're a guy, old friends don't give a c.r.a.p if you've lost or gained weight." Well, we gals have seen the Fashion Police and, frankly, it is us.

But we all know the importance of "playing for the girl's team," too. We know the power, the glory, and the thrill of connecting with other women. And it comes so naturally. h.e.l.l, all we have to do is wait on line to pee in a public ladies' room. Suddenly: Voila, it's girls' night out. In the fifteen minutes it takes women to move from the hallway of the cineplex to the three piddly stalls by the Tampax machine, we can learn each other's life stories. We'll tell each other about our b.a.s.t.a.r.d ex-boyfriend, our menstrual cramps, and the factory outlet where we got this groovy outfit. While washing our hands, we can have meaningful conversations about acupuncture or breast-feeding with women we've never met before. While applying lipstick, we can compare notes about Pap smears with absolute strangers. And if the toilets are out of order, forget it! An entire feminist revolution can be forged around a paper-towel dispenser. We're our own portable war council, complete with extra Kleenex.

Unlike men, who seem to "bond" the way steel girders bond-only through intense heat, external pressure, and a degree of contortion-women "connect." Studies have shown that most men do not make new close friends after the age of twenty-five. Not so for us. Intimacy comes as easily as, well, peeing.

But our relationships with other women do require care and feeding. And it's always struck me as odd that our culture gives us plenty of handy rules for catching a husband, rules for dieting, and rules for investing. But when it comes to friendship-and how to treat other women with respect-we're left to improvise.

I mean, obviously, we girls all know not to sleep with our best friend's lover, or even our best friend's ex-lover. And unless we both agree to it beforehand, true friends do not wear the same outfit to the same party.

But wouldn't it be useful to establish some guidelines beyond this, for ways in which we women should treat each other in general? A universal code of decency among women, perhaps, to help us foster a greater, stronger sense of camaraderie? I mean, we can only hang out in the bathroom for so long. And while a Room of One's Own is important-especially in a Man's World-it would be nice to have a place that doesn't consist mainly of toilets and those annoying, eternally broken hand driers.

So, for starters, why don't we promote these New Rules for Girls?

1. Friends shouldn't be treated as leftovers. You know: taken out and heated up only when there's nothing fresh around? Face it, nothing is so insulting and infuriating as a girlfriend who drops out of sight the moment a Love Interest appears on her horizon. Because the message she sends to her pink posse is: You are only worthwhile when there's no man around. You are grout. You are a consolation prize. You are a backup singer.

Unfortunately, whenever the great romance finally hits some b.u.mps in the road (and all romances do-it comes with the territory) this Invisible Woman usually reappears, seeking the love and support of the very gal-pals she abandoned. And this makes for a great deal of resentment, tension, and mistrust: Oh, now you call us. Where were you when you weren't unhappy and needy?

Why create this situation? If we can be conscientious about keeping up our hair and nails, certainly we can do the same with our friends. Yeah, romance is heady and love is blind. But this doesn't justify treating our friends like chopped liver. If we can manage to pay our bills during the first crazy days of pa.s.sion, or even pick up a carton of milk once a week, surely we can pick up the phone, send an e-mail, and show a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T to the people who have been with us through hangovers, makeovers, and sleepovers for years.

2. Don't dis the sisters. Unless they treat us badly, let's not make a sport out of putting down other women. If a babe weighs three hundred pounds and has decided to wear pink Spandex hot pants, hey: All power to her! If another babe has men swarming around her like the floor of the stock market, so okay. Good for her. We may feel inadequate in comparison for a moment or two, but we'll get over it. We're G.o.ddesses in our own right and we'll have our own days in the sun.

If a female boss is a.s.sertive and short tempered, don't join other colleagues in branding her a b.i.t.c.h. A mother with three whiny children slows down the checkout line at the Food Lion? Offer to give her a hand instead of rolling our eyes. And if we see a woman in a fabulous dress or with beautiful hair, let's tell her! It won't cost us anything, and it'll generate a little kindness and kinship in a world full of misogyny.

We need to cut our gender some serious slack, beyond the folksingers and Girl Power T-shirts. We have nothing to gain by judging, back-stabbing, or criticizing each other unnecessarily. But we do have everything to lose.

3. Keep our hands off another girl's honey. Sometimes it's hard to resist, I know. But we shouldn't kid ourselves: It's wrong to knowingly sleep with another woman's husband, no matter what he tells us about the marriage, no matter if he's a rock star, a millionaire, or the president. It's not "just between the guy and his wife." Besides, let's not flatter ourselves: Seducing married guys is no victory. They're actually far easier targets than the unmarried ones.

4. Toot each other's horns. Oscar Wilde once said, "Every time friend succeeds, a little something inside me dies." Ain't that the awful truth. Sometimes, if a friend wins, say, a Guggenheim Fellowship or finds a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City, their bliss becomes our misery.

Conversely, our friends' misery can also become our bliss: Yippee. Sheila's credit rating is worse than my own. Ho boy, I sure am glad I don't have genital warts. Hee hee, too bad about Trudy and her boyfriend. How was she supposed to know he meant "soph.o.m.ore" in high school?

Yeah, well, whenever possible, we gals should ignore our jealous little hearts and toot each other's horns instead. Frankly, if we don't promote each other and cheerlead for ourselves, few others will.

Besides, fifteen years from now we may not remember the pangs of jealousy we felt when our colleague landed a kick-a.s.s promotion, but she may very well remember how we sprang for a bottle of bubbly, led the office in a toast, and gave her major props. And what goes around comes around: Let's start our engines and spread that good karma.

5. Network like maniacs. All those middle-aged guys in suits who brag about being "self-made" men have a vast network of loved ones, fraternity brothers, golf buddies, Elks, Lions, alumni, and underlings to thank. So we women are wise to build similar networks and clubhouses of our own.

Since we dames tend to love a little dinner party anyway, why not make our social lives do double duty? Regular Girls' Nights Out and potlucks can be a networking tool. Ditto for going to sporting events in which women are playing, thank you.

Or, perhaps better still, we can throw bimonthly "business dinners," featuring demonstration parties for stuff like Tupperware, the Pampered Chef, Mary Kay, Weekenders, and so forth. These companies tend to be comprised mainly of saleswomen who work on commission-and who will come right to our homes for a demo. This way we get to (a) eat, (b) shop, (c) support another woman running her own business, and, (d) network all at the same time. I mean, short of a couple of o.r.g.a.s.ms, what could be better?

Recently in Nashville, Tennessee, a group of women writers formed the League of Beleaguered Women (shouldn't we have a spin-off, the Beleaguered Women Voters?) in order to lend each other support in what is generally-trust me on this-a thankless and frustrating profession.

Well, their name got me thinking: Since the right wing often appropriates the language of patriotism and domesticity for its extremist, patriarchal organizations (i.e., Focus on the Family, the Eagle Forum, the Heritage Foundation), thus making a mockery of all that is good, why not respond in kind by giving our networks names that spoof the right? We could form the Wiccan Coalition. The G.o.ddess Squad. Onward Vixen Soldiers. The Tea 'n' Crumpet Strumpets. You get the idea.

6. Great Expectations is a work of fiction. If a guy washes our dishes one night, lets us control the TV remote, and calls when he says he's going to call, we think he's a saint. If he says excuse-me after he burps and puts the toilet seat down, we think he deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor. If he knows how to make spaghetti without reading the directions on the side of the box, we think he's a domestic genius. But let our girlfriend go a week without returning our phone calls and, forget it, she's in the doghouse.

Hel-lo?

7. Avoid the "chicken-dinner syndrome." My friend Ophi has an expression called the "chicken-dinner syndrome." That's when women pick ourselves apart like a chicken dinner, critiquing our thighs, legs, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and so forth in an orgy of self-hatred until we've virtually cut ourselves to pieces.

Well, I've seen chicken-dinner syndrome on a communal level as well, and it ain't any prettier. In this case, one woman takes the floor at a conference, heads a business meeting, or otherwise speaks her mind-and the other women in the audience promptly pick her apart. Everyone takes a piece of her until there's nothing left.

I've watched a female office staff verbally hack apart a female boss because they didn't like the Christmas presents she gave them. (Never mind that her predecessor, a man, gave out bupkus for six years running.) I've heard single mothers tell a congresswoman-who was working to protect their interests from budget cuts-"Well, I'm not voting for you because you're just fat and ugly." And I've heard women dis a brilliant female professor because her clothes were a little, shall we say, unfortunate.

Obviously, we shouldn't brainwash ourselves with estrogen. There's no glory in supporting women just because they're women. But would it kill us to give each other the benefit of the doubt once in a while?

Remember, we need each other. When our panties are down and there's no more toilet paper in the ladies' room, it's the woman in the next stall we're always going to turn to for help.

Chapter 14.