Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (May 2, 2008)

GAY MARRIAGE AND PDA'S? WHY SIMPLY EVERYONE IS DOING THEM. WELL, EVERYONE WHITE THAT IS
On Monday, Brent wrote a blog post about the cover article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine titled "Young Gay Rites". We were so taken with it we decided to get in touch with piecer's author, Benoit Denizet-Lewis to ask him a couple of questions.

AfterElton.com: How'd the assignment come about? Did you pitch it?
Benoit Denizet-Lewis: Yeah, I pitched it after Brandon and Marc told me about their engagements.

AE: What's the reaction been? Is it resonating with younger folks? Any criticism from older folks? BDL: Reaction is mostly positive. I got my predictable "gays are bad" and "gays can change" emails, but for the most part people liked the story, which is nice to hear. I've gotten dozens of emails from young couples across the country, and one guy suggested that someone start a Facebook group for young gay male couples who have registered their relationships. It's not a bad idea.

AE: Do you personally think these changes are a good thing or a bad thing? Do you share Dan Savage's concern that some folks don't quite understand the significance of what they're doing? BDL: Sure, I share Dan's concern, but I'm equally concerned when young straight people get married. In general, I think that increasing numbers of gay teens are able to live their gay adolescence as actual adolescents, and that is a WONDERFUL thing. Some of these young gay men will choose to marry, and I believe they should have that right.

AE: You did a great job of capturing the personality of the couples profiled. How'd you meet them? How long did you spend with them?
BDL: I knew Marc and Brandon before I started writing the piece. After I found out that more than 700 gay men in their twenties had been married through last June in Massachusetts, I went looking for some of them. They weren't always easy to find. I tried contacting local gay organizations, but they could usually only point me to married couples in their thirties, forties, and fifties. To find younger married couples, I basically asked every gay person I knew to ask every gay person they knew if they knew of any young gay married couples. I found most of the couples that way.

AE: I love the stylized graphics that accompany the piece! Do you know how that came about?
BDL: I had nothing to do with the photographs. The Times got a famous photographer, Erwin Olaf, to take the pictures. Clearly, Olaf was going for a 1950s theme.

AE: The folks profiled are a pretty white middle class bunch. You think things are different for non-white gay folks?
BDL: One of the criticisms of the piece is that all the couples are white. Believe me, I tried very hard to find young married couples of color in Massachusetts, but I couldn't find any. (Actually, I did find one Asian couple, but they were in a long-distance relationship.) What was going on? Well, I started talking to demographers and those who have studied couples who have chosen to register their relationships, and they all told me the same thing: The vast majority of those couples are white. We know there are many, many young gay couples of color, but for whatever reason, they are not registering their relationships very often. That's a story for another day.

The other item from this week that got a lot of attention from you folks was my post about 20/20's handling of last Friday's "What Would You Do?" segment that looked at how folks in Birmingham, Alabama and Verona, New Jersey reacted to gay public displays of affection. I had a couple of questions for both 20/20 and the Birmingham Police Department about how they handled one woman's 911 complaint.

Basically I wanted to know why the department even sent a cop and why ABC didn't follow up on that. So far neither ABC nor the Birmingham Police have deigned to return my calls. Don't worry — I'll be following up.

The segment seemed to paint an awfully rosy picture of how accepting folks in both Alabama and New Jersey are of gay folks acting like straight folks in public. I have to say, I certainly don't feel folks are that accepting, and other than a quick peck good-bye at the airport, I can't see Brent and I canoodling on a public bench in most parts of the country. How do you folks feel? Are PDAs safe where you live?