The Baby and the Bath Water

That’s not like The Host­ess with the Most­ess or The Cat in the Hat.  The whole phrase is Throw­ing out the baby with the bath water.

Our soci­ety has made really major improve­ments in the last 40 or 50 years.  The most obvi­ous is the sta­tus, role, and oppor­tu­ni­ties for black peo­ple and that doesn’t require any elab­o­ra­tion other than a peek at the White House.

Another is the sta­tus of and oppor­tu­ni­ties for women.  Back then if a woman wanted to work she pretty much had three choices:  librar­ian, school teacher, or nurse, none of which paid well back then, and they were treated like inden­tured ser­vants.  In a lot of dis­tricts if a woman became preg­nant she had to quit or stand down for the dura­tion.  Not too long before that a nurse had to have the high­est morals and no hus­band.  The morals part she could demon­strate by never going on a date in public.

Another sign that our soci­ety was a lit­tle short of par­adise is evi­denced by the com­ment a painter made to me one day in a New Orleans bar:

When I was younger some of us would pile into a car and go cruis­ing around Tulane look­ing for queers to beat up.

That he no longer thought that was such a grand idea was evi­denced by the fact that he used the anec­dote to illus­trate what a jerk he had been when younger, in a story about how much had changed.

That’s the bath­wa­ter part.  That was some murky, pol­luted bath­wa­ter and our soci­ety is the bet­ter for it’s hav­ing been pitched out into the weed patch.

When you wash the baby, make it all clean and fresh-​​smelling, you want to dis­card the water but you don’t want to throw the baby out into the weed patch, too.  And some­times that hap­pens.

The FCC has decided to change the design of its shirts after the orig­i­nal design, which was sub­mit­ted by stu­dents and voted on by the fresh­man class, sparked out­cry from mem­bers within the gay, les­bian, bisex­ual and trans­gen­der community…

…The orig­i­nal design, which won out over five other entries, dis­played an F. Scott Fitzger­ald quote in the front — “I think of all Har­vard men as sissies” — in bold white let­ters. The back of the long-​​sleeved, navy blue T-​​shirt said “WE AGREE” in cap­i­tal let­ters, with “The Game 2009” scrawled in script under­neath it.

[T]he gay, les­bian, bisex­ual and trans­gen­der com­mu­nity.

Whether or not one is gay, or homo­sex­ual, is pretty much a ques­tion of what you like to put, or have put, and where.  I get that.

What I don’t get is how that’s a com­mu­nity.  Nor do I get how this so-​​called com­mu­nity gets an absolute veto over what the stu­dent body at a col­lege does, right down to dic­tat­ing what they may or may not put on their shirt for The Big Game.

Another thing I don’t get.  Upon occa­sion, dur­ing inti­mate moments, my girl might feel like doing a ride ‘em, cow­girl num­ber and, so to speak, sad­dle up. And per­haps, keep­ing with the same motif, I might like to have a go at stal­lion mode.  And we might find that such activ­ity is what we really like and keeps sparks flying.

But we’re not, based on that, going to form a vot­ing bloc.

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Tags: sexual preference