F. Scott Was On to Something

"Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they'll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white."

That quote I stumbed upon a few days ago when I picked up a copy of The Great Gatsby (what a book, by the way. Maybe the Great American Novel, but that's getting off track). Those words were written by Fitzgerald in 1925 and are uttered by the novel's most obnoxious and unsympathetic character, Tom Buchanan.

Does it sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds exactly like what our own obnoxious and unsympathetic character, George W. Bush, spouts every time the issue of gay marriage comes up. You know the company line: we have to protect families and the institution of marriage, blah, blah, blah.

The point is: there's a reason why Gatsby is still widely read and taught 80 years after it was published: the book is still relevant and will always be.

Gay marriage, as was the case with interracial marriage, is inevitable. I really believe this. The religious Right knows it, too, and that's why Bush has tried everything, including amending the constitution, to make sure it doesn't happen. Of course denying gays the right to marry is already unconstitutional, but this is all old news...

nwb

PS. The film adaptation of Gatsby, the overblown one with a miscast Robert Redford and an insufferable Mia Farrow, is damn near unwatchable.

Oh, but what a book.