Gay Marriage: Why is This Still a Question?

Right. Now I've reached the grand age of 51 (in December—passed without so much as a mention in this forum), and I need to get a bit more serious about life, geeky or not. No more of this posting when my fancy strikes, in the manner of a casual, laid-back, frivolous person in her 40s. I am a woman of practicality, solidity, and dependability, and gravitas and I will actually live up to my promise of posting once a week from now on. You hear me, Unknown Reader? From now on!  Or, at least, once every other week. Once a month?

Part of my excuse is that I have taken the bold and distinctly impractical step of falling in love since my trip to Scotland. While I have assured my beloved that it is not his fault that I have posted scarce anything new in the months since we've been seeing each other, I have to admit that I am highly distractable these days, and that spending time with him and calling him often seem much more desirable pastimes than staring at a blinking cursor for hours trying to come up with something topical or amusing for a blog entry. But that excuse, of course, is exactly that: an excuse.

So, while on the subject of love, I thought, per the famous poem recited on playgrounds by taunting children everywhere, I might segue into the topic of marriage. Specifically, gay marriage. And why it still isn't allowed in my adopted home, the state of Pennsylvania. I should start by saying that, given my history of the past eighteen years, I'm rather opposed to marriage for myself. I mean, do all you gay men and women know that you're letting yourself in for countless arguments over whose turn it is to wash dishes, who cleans up more after the other, who gets to decide where you go on vacation, what you eat for dinner, what television shows you watch, and when the car needs servicing, and Is that really what you're going to wear? and Do you honestly consider that a nutritious meal? and Do we have to visit your father this Thanksgiving? and Why does it always sound like a pistol report when you bite into an apple? and Why must you always amend every bloody thing that I say?? Ahem. Got a little carried away. Your marriage won't be like that. Probably. Though you never can tell.

Now, some of my coupled gay and lesbian friends say that, even with the right to marriage, they probably wouldn't exercise the option. Some because it just doesn't seem worth the bother (see my own views above); some because they feel it would open up their private lives to prejudice from strangers who otherwise might be blissfully ignorant of their sexual orientation. But others would joyfully welcome the opportunity. Eleven years ago, a friend of mine from college got married to her partner in Canada. I was present at their beautiful and moving wedding reception nearly a year later in Oregon, where they live. There, surrounded by friends and family, they reaffirmed their commitment to each other, ate wedding cake, and were toasted. I can't remember if they exchanged rings, as I was chasing around after my toddler daughter at the time, but I imagine they did. Also, I have zero memory of what the brides wore, though I'm fairly certain it wasn't white. And probably not dresses, either, though I can't say for sure. I would make a terrible social pages reporter.

So, back to the issue at hand: Pennsylvania is one of the few Northeastern states that does not allow gay marriage. In the map below from January of this year (according to Wikipedia), Pennsylvania shows up as pink (same-sex marriage banned), surrounded on three (3!) sides by dark blue (same-sex marriage legal). Why is this? First, a little history: in 1996, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania passed a law defining marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman, and refusing to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where it was legal.

January 2014 map of status of gay marriage (Wikipedia)

[For a more informative map that chronicles the ever-changing status of same-sex marriage across the country by year from 2000-2014, connect to this link on the Mother Jones website, called "The Spread of Marriage Equality." It is quite fascinating to watch the states pop into and out of the legalization of same-sex marriage.]

Supporters of same-sex marriage celebrating Supreme Court decisions

On June 26 of last year the United States Supreme Court, in two 5-4 judgments, struck down both California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, and the part of the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that denies legally-married same-sex couples government benefits generally accorded to heterosexual couples. Though this was a landmark decision, they did not then go on to claim a national right to same-sex marriage. A Philadelphia Inquirer article appearing the next day presented the arguments for each side. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (and, interestingly, joined the minority opinion in the Proposition 8 ruling), stating: "DOMA divests married same-sex couples of the duties and responsibilities that are an essential part of married life. It tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage." Justice Antonin Scalia, for the minority opinion, wrote: "The Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms."

D. Bruce Hanes

Getting back to the situation in Pennsylvania: in July of last summer, Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes began issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples, on the grounds that he considered the 1996 Pennsylvania Marriage Law unconstitutional. He managed to issue 174 of these licences before Commonwealth Judge Dan Pellegrini ordered him to cease and desist in September. Since then, several couples have filed suit against the state, with the largest suit, Ballen v. Corbett, brought by Sasha Ballen and Diana Spagnuolo and 27 other couples,  naming Governor Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, and state Secretary of Health Michael Wolf as preventing their right to be married. At the moment, these couples remain in limbo, because, at the time of his ruling, Judge Pellegrini did not clarify the status of the marriages that had already taken place, and thus they still don't know if they qualify for such things as joint income tax filing or spousal benefits. While the IRS announced last September that they would accept joint filing from couples married in states where same-sex marriage is legal, this ruling does not apply to couples married in Pennsylvania, where it is not legal.

According to an Associated Press report on Feb. 20 of this year, lawyers for the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health (which issues marriage licences) further claimed that, "Same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in our nation's history so as to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty and, therefore, cannot be considered a fundamental right.... The very recent developments among a minority of states do not transform same-sex marriage into a 'deeply rooted' historical and traditional right." And in an agreement reached between the two sides in January of this year, allowing the case to proceed, Judge Pellegrini commented, "This should not be an issue of a vast amount of fact-finding.... The arguments at this point are pretty much well-developed."

And what are these arguments? I gather from reading a wide variety of conservative and religious anti-gay-marriage websites that the basic objections to it are roughly as follows: same-sex marriage denies the "true purpose" of marriage, which is the perpetuation of the species; it denies children of said unions either a father or a mother; it promotes homosexuality by giving it legal standing and encourages immorality; it imposes morally repugnant practices on society at large; and, finally, it is offensive to God.

Following these arguments to their logical extremes (for which I do not apologize, as the opponents of gay marriage feel no compunction about doing the same — witness all the arguments that, if we allow gay marriage, then marriage between people and dogs will surely follow), let me address each of these arguments in turn.

Same-sex marriage denies the true purpose of marriage, which is the perpetuation of the species. This would mean that infertile couples and couples who intend to have no children should not be allowed to marry, as they are perverting the "true purpose" of marriage. And, by the way, nowhere is it written down anywhere in law or religious scripture what the true purpose of marriage is. I expect it was originally a way of solidifying inheritance claims and providing for the political and financial joining of two separate familial entities.

Same-sex marriage denies children of such unions either a father or mother. By this logic, people who have divorced, who have conceived and are raising a child out of wedlock, or whose spouse has died, deserted them, is currently working or fighting abroad, or is imprisoned are unfit parents because they are depriving their child of a mother or father. Yes, in an ideal world, children would have both a mother and a father, but, as we can easily see, we are not living in an ideal world.

Same-sex marriage promotes homosexuality and encourages immorality. I fail to see how allowing people of the same gender to marry each other would encourage people to become gay, or would make the gay lifestyle more attractive to those who are (presumably) undecided. Marriage is not a romp in the hay; it's a legal and binding contract. Moreover, as I (and most scientists of human sexuality who have no religious or political agenda) understand it, homosexuality is not chosen. I mean, think about it: a young man or woman in the throes of adolescence muses to him- or herself: "Let's see, I could choose to be attracted to/fall in love with someone of the opposite gender and fulfill all the expectations society puts upon me and receive approbation, or I could choose someone of the same gender and be discriminated against, spit on, accused of degeneracy and of unravelling the moral fiber of society. Hmmm. which to choose, which to choose?" 

Same-sex marriage imposes morally repugnant practices on society at large. As to whether or not homosexual practices are repugnant or immoral, I find that a spurious argument. I find smoking repugnant, yet I would not deny smokers the right to marry, have children, or be served in shops owned by non-smokers. Besides, marriage is only partly about sex; it is also about financial security, about responsibility for each other's health and well-being, about companionship, about intellectual and emotional compatibility, and sometimes about the raising of children in a stable and loving environment. As to the "imposing" of these practices on society (and yes, conservative websites state this; I'm not making it up to make them look bad), they are referring to the financial and other penalties that will befall anyone refusing service, tenancy, or civil rights to couples of the same sex. To this I say, get over it. (Yeah, I know, it doesn't sound very enlightened on my part, does it?) Vegan clerks have to serve meat-eating customers in department stores; Jewish shopowners have to ring up the purchases of neo-Nazi customers, fundamentalist Christian waiters have to seat Wiccan patrons in restaurants, tree-hugging conservationist ushers have to show petroleum corporation CEOs to their theater seats. There will always be people whose views or practices we find morally repugnant, but, as long as they are not breaking the law, we are not allowed to violate their rights as citizens of this nation.

Same-sex marriage is offensive to God. Here, I'm on admittedly shakier ground, since I'm not a theologian. Those of you who don't believe in God can just skip this paragraph, because it will be irrelevant to you. Well, since God has not seen fit to have this recorded in any of His many Scriptures, I'm not sure how we know that He is opposed to same-sex marriage. The very idea of same-sex marriage was inconceiveable in the days when the holy texts were recorded. There is, however, commmentary on same-sex relations, of which God does appear to disapprove strongly. At least between men. I'll start by dipping into my own tradition: in Leviticus 20:13 it states, "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." Looks pretty straightforward. But what does it mean? "...lies with a man as one lies with a woman..." —is this talking about love? about romance? about sex? only about sex in the absence of love? What kind of sex? Also, what about that word "abomination"? In Hebrew, it is to'evah. Jay Michaelson in an online article in Religious Dispatches of USC Annenberg, cites 103 uses of the word to'evah or its plural in the Torah, almost always with reference to the cultic practices of non-Israelites. He suggests that this particular to'evah referred to a cultic practice of homosexual ritual sex, rather than to a loving union between committed partners. In the Christian Bible, there are four explicit condemnations of (male) homosexual sex: Romans 1:26-27, Corinthians 6:9-10, Timothy 1:9-10, and Jude 1:7, as well as several vague references that are taken to be about that. Again, given the context of this condemnation (men who have sex with other men are lumped in with murderers, liars, whoremongers, idolaters, and lechers), it would seem that this refers rather to the following of selfish pleasures and crimes for one's own gain, than to the wish for a stable family unit and the companionship that goes along with a committed relationship. The NALT Christians Project website offers some arguments in favor of understanding and acceptance. I cannot claim to know much of anything about Islam's stance on homosexuality. Apparently the Qur'an contains five verses that explicitly condemn homosexuality. The Mission Islam website contains a discussion of these verses, and, while it comes down wholeheartedly on the side of homosexuality as abhorrent to God, it does mention that liberal Muslims note that there is no judgment on Mohammed's part as to what should be done with men who practice homosexual acts.

Well, this has become an unwieldy post indeed. I beg your indulgence, Unknown Reader, for having rendered you either impatient with the tiresome length of my argument or indignant at its superficiality. So I will conclude with an emotional appeal, since this is such an emotional topic. Can we agree to separate the act of homosexual sex from the idea of same-sex marriage? Whatever emotional responses contemplation of these acts arouses in you, don't two people of the same gender who love each other and who are willing to enter into a public, legal union with responsibilities and duties, often so that they can raise children in a stable and committed environment, have the same right as people of different genders to enter into matrimony? Why shouldn't they be covered by their spouse's health insurance, be allowed to file joint tax returns, be able to visit each other in the hospital, be listed as their child's legal guardian in the event of the death of their partner? All those things that heterosexual couples take for granted.

So, to all the gay and lesbian couples out there waiting for Pennsylvania to legalize same-sex marriage, I wish you patience and fortitude. Whatever the decision handed down in the current court case, I think it's only a matter of time before the Commonwealth comes down on the side of justice and reason. In the meantime, try to work out beforehand who's going to do the dishes and just how often you will be expected to visit your fathers-in-law. Good luck!

 

On Holiday in Scotland – Glasgow

[Again, this is being posted months after the trip–a good portion of it was written while still in Scotland, some upon our return, but Blogger somehow ate several hours of writing, so a lot of this is being reconstructed from memory. Also, procrastination (see earlier blog entry).]

Glasgow street in state of dilapidation

Now we've moved on to Glasgow, to our decidedly more urban flat. At first, when we got here, we had a bit of culture shock; this was not our beloved medieval, picturesque, refined Edinburgh. It is squalid, weedy, trash-strewn, run-down, marred by graffiti and disrepair. The River Clyde, grey and muddy, gives off a distinct odor of sewage in places. The city is riddled with dirt-mounded construction sites and large cranes in preparation for hosting next year's 20th Commonwealth Games. But our very obliging landlord, Mr. Macdonald (yes, really, there are people here named after that fast-food chain), took us on a wee tour of the city when we arrived (Am I overdoing the word "wee"? Possibly, but I think not. It's used whenever the slightest hint of smallness creeps into conversation), before depositing us at our comfortable flat on the south side of Glasgow Green, a large swath of park to the southwest of the center of town. Slowly, as the week has progressed,  we have become more aware of the city's beauties.

Our first move, however, was to hike a mile and a half to the local Tesco (a kind of British A&P or Kroger or Piggly Wiggly–pick whichever American supermarket chain you find to be most ubiquitous) to buy provisions for dinner and the following day. The kids discovered nearly an entire aisle of biscuits (cookies to us Yanks) and, when I told them sternly that we could absolutely not get one package of every variety, agonized for nearly twenty minutes over what kinds to buy. The boys' favorite has turned out to be Jaffa Cakes, a spongey cookie with marmalade inside and a dark chocolate coating on top. My daughter, the sweets fanatic, likes the plain tea biscuits best (they are plain wafers with very little sugar), much to my surprise. Both types of biscuit go very well with Scottish tea. The boys have rationed the Jaffa Cakes–no more than three a day per person, which means a packet lasts two and a half days instead of one. Of such small sacrifices is life compounded.

Immediately following the Tesco excursion, the kids discovered a fantastic playground on the Green, with 20-foot tall slides and amazing climbers, and proved that 15 is still a kid–the boys played just as avidly as my 10-year-old daughter. Also, watching my children scale those vertiginous heights with only a thin layer of sand on top of packed earth below, I theorized that the Scottish are a far less litigious society than the Americans.

The Barras

Kids at a candy stall in the Barras

Our first full day in Glasgow we wandered over to the Barras, a sort of year-round weekend flea market that has been taking place since the 1920s in open stalls and covered malls. "Barra" is the Glaswegian dialect for  "barrow," as goods were originally sold from large wheelbarrows. There were piles of discarded electronics, used clothing, designer handbag knock-offs, kilts, T-shirts, used DVDs and CDs, food of all kinds, and used furniture. The children gravitated toward a stall selling candy. My daughter had a great find–she managed to fish a lovely sterling silver Celtic-knotwork ring out of a bowl of rings (it looked like a serving of metallic spaghetti) and paid only £5 for it.

Later that day I resolved we should have tea at the Willow Tea Room, mentioned in the guidebook as a lovely representation of Glaswegian architect and designer  Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Art Nouveau style. Well, off we set on foot. I figured an afternoon tea would serve us in place of a late lunch. The Tearoom didn't look that far away on the map, but the streets of Glasgow do not meet at right angles, no matter what our charming landlord asserted: "It's the first European city constructed on a grid pattern, ye know." Also, to make things more interesting, the playful city planners leave off street signs at more confusing intersections. After walking for forty-five minutes, turning, turning again, retracing our steps, and staring at the map in frustration, the kids revolted. They sat down on a curb and refused to go another step. "We're hungry!" they moaned. "Our feet hurt! Let's just eat anywhere!" There was a McDonald's close by (no relation to our charming and inaccurate landlord), and I shuddered.

"Come on!" I encouraged. "It can't be more than three blocks from here!" I turned the map again and frowned. "Unless we're here, and then we're eleven blocks away. Or..." I turned the map again and blinked. "Never mind!" I chirped. "We're close!" The children glared at me mutinously. My son delivered the ultimatum: "We'll walk ten more minutes and that's all. Then we have to eat." "Fine, fine!" I hastily agreed. "Ten minutes, then food, no matter what."

Afternoon tea in the Willow Tea Room

After a few more false turns, I started to get desperate. As the minutes ticked away, I finally got up the courage to approach one of the natives. "Um, we're trying to find Sauchiehall Street...." (Trying frantically to figure out how to pronounce it, vacillating between "Soshy-hall Street" and "Sowchee-hall Street," I eventually settled on the latter) "Whaire. loove?" asked the perplexed Glaswegian. "Here!" I said, thrusting the guidebook into his hands and pointing at the word. "Ah!" His face lit up with comprehension, "So-key-hall Street! It's just over thaire!" He gestured, and the murderous looks on the kids' faces softened a little. In the end, it did take us a few more than ten minutes to get there, but we made it. And we had a wonderful afternoon tea there, each of us with our own little pot: Earl Grey for my daugher, Darjeeling for my son, Scottish Breakfast for my son's friend, and the shop's own Willow Tea Blend for me. My son and I ordered the full afternoon tea set, so ours came on a three-tiered platter with crustless sandwiches on the bottom, scones with clotted cream in the middle, and cake on top. Sitting on elegant ladder-back chairs that echoed the designs on the walls, sipping scalding tea and eating those scones dripping with strawberry preserves and clotted cream, we gazed around at the lovely light fixtures and decorations in the Glasgow Style. Bliss, Scottish-style! Also, the triumph of pigheaded determination over whining.

People's Palace

My favorite attraction in Glasgow turned out to the be the People's Palace, which was located on the Green, only ten minutes from our flat. In addition to the over-the-top fountain crowned by a statue of Queen Victoria outside, it featured room after room of recreations of moments in time in the working class and bourgeois history of Glasgow from the 18th century until about the 1970's. There was the Single End, a model of a single-room family apartment from the 1930's, where an entire family ate, slept, and lived. There was the Steamie, a public building where women would go to bathe and to wash clothes and gossip. And there was a World War II family bomb shelter, where the family would go during the air raids. I stood rapt in front of exhibits on contraception, the temperance movement, and dancehalls, only to look up at the end and find the children camped out on the staircase, moaning, "Can we go now?" The plaintive cry of the modern 21st-century child with the 140-character attention span.

View from ferry of unknown castle on banks of Loch Lomond

Two days before we were scheduled to fly home, we took a day trip to Loch Lomond, the largest loch in Scotland, but the day was chilly, overcast, and rainy. By the time we caught the ferry out to the island of Inchmurrin, which featured an inn and some Roman ruins, we barely had time for a soggy lunch of fish and chips before we had to get back on the ferry and return to the mainland. We never discovered the ruins, which even the tour guides assured us were "not mach ta see–bit disappointin', reeelly." Do Scottish tour guides even have to pass any sort of test on how to get tourists excited about local landmarks? Or maybe that's just as effusive as Scots get.

Children frolicking in secret garden

The children's moods were as dour as the weather when I suggested we take the footpath alongside the loch to see Balloch Castle, a manor house rebuilt in the early 19th century from the ruins of a 1238 castle. "Do we have to?" was the glum response to my chirpy suggestion. I quickly moved into Fierce Authoritarian Mode: "Yes, you do. Come on." We started off in a grudging, foot-dragging manner, but the mood transformed when, half-way to the castle, we found a walled garden. The kids frolicked (yes, they did, I assert defensively; they also gamboled and frisked. And rolled around on the grass) and then settled onto stone benches to read the books they had bought at Waterstones (sort of a British Barnes & Noble, but much, much better) the day before. It was exceedingly picturesque.

GeekMom in front of Balloch Castle

Nearly an hour later, we proceeded on toward the castle. We never found the ruins of the original castle, which I later read consist only of a grassy mound. Finally, we reached a large meadow studded with boulders in that picturesque Scottish way (I can just picture the Scottish Tourist Board inspectors walking about with clipboards, calling out to each other, "We cuid do with another wee boulder heere, Fergus."), and the disappointingly boxy, austere castle was in sight. My son, who had been looking green for the past half hour or so, suddenly flopped down onto the ground, moaning in agony from stomach pains, caused, no doubt, by the very greasy fish and chips we had had for lunch. We waited under the uncertain sky (kept threatening rain that never came) for him to recover, then walked up to the castle for a closer inspection. It was closed, and dismal up close, where evidence of modernization lay all around: exit signs, tourist pamphlets, vending machines. There was, however, a convenient public toilet, so my son recovered and we headed back to town.

Teens in playground

The day concluded with all three children playing in the local playground, another marvel of Scottish whimsy and total disregard for children's life and limb. then dinner at a pub, where we savored our last real Scottish meal, shepherd's pie for me, followed by sticky toffee pudding. The latter is a sweet, gooey slab of heaven studded with dates and drowning in caramel sauce, which looks like something that has been coughed up by a cow with an unsettled stomach. Never has something that looks so unappetizing tasted so good. And here is where I will end my travelogue of Scotland, with the memory of that warm, achingly sweet confection lingering in my mouth. I feel two weeks was not enough time to see even the tiniest portion of Scotland, but there is the dream that we will go back some day, to traverse the Highlands, to set foot on the Isle of Skye, and to explore the northern reaches of Loch Lomond. "O ye'll tak' the high road and Ah'll tak' the low/ And Ah'll be in Scotlan' afore ye...."

Sticky toffee pudding

On Holiday in Scotland – Edinburgh

[This should have been posted a long time ago, but I've been fretting and worrying at it, so we've now been back from Scotland two full months and more, and not much progress has occurred. So much for my resolve to start posting punctually once a week....]

My romance with Scotland goes back to age 11. Ever since I read Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped in 5th grade, I have wanted to go to Scotland. That Alan Breck! With his annoying attitude of superiority, his bravado, his braggadocio, his fierce pride in being a Highlander, his reckless courage in the face of danger, his deep loyalty to his young friend David Balfour that overcomes even their difference in politics (he's a Jacobite, who supports the claims of the House of Stewart to the throne of Scotland, while David's a Whig who's loyal to King George). I could imagine no one more exciting as a companion for an adventure. And the landscape! All those crags, and promontories, and heaths, and bogs, and barren islands! That landscape was as much a character in the book as all the eccentric figures who put in an appearance. Finally, the Scots dialect! Who couldn't love: "'David,' [Alan] cried, 'David, are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It's fair murder.'" Och, it's fair poetry!

Later, I read Sir Walter Scott, and saw Local Hero, and, much later, learned how to do Scottish Country Dancing in New York City. While learning the intricacies of the pas-de-basque or the petronella figure, I would listen to all those Scottish dialects coming out of those Scottish expatriate mouths, and yearn for the Motherland, even though it wasn't my motherland.

So I and the kids and my son's friend are now on holiday in Scotland. It's a dream come true for  me, a long cherished desire. For the first week, we rented a cottage in the Lothians, near the village of West Linton; now we're finishing up in a flat in Glasgow, on the edge of Glasgow Green. Neither of these is the Highlands, but they will certainly do. The cottage was on the property of a larger house, called Slipperfield Cottage, owned by the warm and congenial Kilpatricks, and had its own private woods and loch (I haven't yet figured out how large a body of water has to be to be considered a loch, but this one is the size of a middling pond), and is surrounded by farmland on all sides.

Rock wall near West Linton

Scottish cattle near Slipperfield Cottage

Now, I grew up in the Midwest, so I know farmland. But this farmland is to the farmland of my childhood what Stir- ling Castle is to an East Central Illinois split-level brick ranch house. It is wild. It is craggy and steep. It is framed by heather, and thistle, and wind-blasted trees. There are tumbledown rock walls, and rusted barbed wire, and shaggy cattle placidly chewing the cud. Grey clouds pile up at the top of a hillside, then come boiling down the side, bringing torrential downpours of rain that just as suddenly stop. Sheep fan out on intensely green, impossibly steep hillsides. Craggy men, to match the craggy landscape, stride by in thigh-high olive green wellies, taking their wee dog for a walk (and if you think the word "wee" is cutesy, you haven't heard it coming out of the mouth of red-faced, square-jawed, yellow-toothed Scottish farmer with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth).

Since we arrived during the last week of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,  and I hadn't planned ahead, there were no rental cars available with automatic transmission. In the U.K., it's sort of a mark of ineptitude if you can't drive a standard transmission, so I had to explain over and over, at each subsequent rental counter, with mounting embarrassment, that, as a pathetic American driver, I actually needed a car with automatic transmission. Finally, I found one, but the rental price was nearly one and a half times the rental for my cottage. I gave up, and we decided to throw ourselves on the mercy of public transportation. As it was, this was perfect: we got a tranquil hour-long bus ride into Edinburgh and back each day, with the magnificent scenery unfolding around us, and I was spared the white knuckle experience of driving on steep, impossibly narrow roads at impossibly high speeds, on the left-hand side of the road. All for less than £20 a day.

Singers advertising a musical

My daughter and street magician

The Fringe Festival was so much fun: the streets packed with crowds of people from all over, street performers and musicians on every corner. Street vendors were hawking their wares, caricature artists were drawing people's likenesses, barkers were handing out flyers for shows later that night. The catalog of shows was nearly an inch thick. We tried to figure out how to get tickets at the half-price booth, but the process was so difficult, and you had to know exactly what you wanted to see, so we eventually gave up and picked up a booklet advertising free shows. We eventually managed to find a couple of free comedy shows that were rated PG (by far the most common rating was 18+, as the raunch and profanity factors were high in these shows). My son and his friend were a little dubious: if the shows were free, how could they be good? And if they were PG, how could they not be other than childish?

Chris Turner

Well, the boys were wrong. The two shows we picked at random were both excellent. One was a comic play by an ensemble cast from London performed in the basement of a Mexican restaurant (every possible open space is commandeered as a performance space during the Festival); the other was a set of three English stand-up comedians performing in a tiny room above a bar. We the audience were seated with our knees up against the backs of the people in front of us, the people in the front row nearly toe-to-toe with the comedians. The piece de resistance at the end was a freestyle rap performed by one of the comedians, Chris Turner, who incorporated five random words from the audience into his rap: in our case, Viking, handbag, harpist, jellybean, and utilitarianism. I can't figure out how he managed to think so fast on his feet, find all the rhymes, make sense, make clever jokes, and stay on the beat. In one portion, he used the word "slag" (offensive British slang term for a woman of easy virtue) to rhyme with handbag, all the while apologizing (in rhyme) for his use of the offensive word.

Kids touching the nose of Greyfriars Bobby

In addition to the Fringe, we took in many of the more touristy sights of Edinburgh, including Edinburgh Castle, the Botanical Gardens, Greyfriars Kirk (and the nearby Greyfriars Bobby Pub, with its bronze statue of Greyfriars Bobby outside, the wee faithful terrier that sat patiently on his dead master's grave for fourteen years until dying himself in 1872. That seems a suspiciously long life for a Skye Terrier, but what do I know? The statue is cute, its nose is rubbed shiny by all the tourists, and we had to queue up just to get a chance to take a picture, after a young couple from England, a large tour group of Japanese, and the extended family of some South Americans.

Distorted room at Camera Obscura

We also went into the Camera Obscura, a museum built in 1853 with a real camera obscura on the fifth floor, the pinhole apparatus being attached to the roof with a swivel, and reflecting its picture of the city onto a white wooden bowl in the middle of the room, which we all croweded around while our Swedish (yeah, it's a summer job) guide explained what we were seeing. Unfortunately, the day was overcast, so the picture was dim, but I still got a sense of what those mid-19th-century people must have felt seeing their city in miniature, flags waving, tiny tourists walking across even tinier cobblestones. Downstairs, there were rooms full of holograms, optical illusions, and mirrored mazes. There was a room that looked like a normal room from one central position, but, once you entered it, it was clear that it was terribly distorted. My son and I stood in two corners of the room (see above, and know that my son is taller than I am), and the effect to the onlooker was surreal–we look like we're built to different scales. But both the floor and ceiling are tilted, and those windows along the back wall are not square at all.

Then there was the bridge across the "Spinning Vortex" (spinning tubular walls with lights), which, though absolutely stationary, felt as if it were tilting drunkenly to the side. We staggered across the bridge, clinging to the railing, feeling as if we were in imminent danger of falling, though nothing was moving at all. If you closed your eyes, the sensation of falling vanished instantly. My daughter and son and his friend went across multiple times, laughing with glee; after a second time across, I felt faintly ill, and watched from the sidelines after that. Amazing how suggestible the human brain is.

Old Town Bookshop in Edinburgh

On our last full day in Edinburgh, I insisted that we visit a bookshop specializing in rare and antique books, with a special emphasis on Scottish authors and Scottish history. I found a whole shelf of leather-bound Scott novels printed on tissue-thin paper, and had a choice of a three- or a five-volume set of the collected poems of Robert Burns. I had no idea the man was so prolific. I settled on the three-volume set. While I love Burns, there is a limit to how much I Burns I can take in one sitting.

So now this blog entry has stretched ridiculously long and ridiculously late, so I am cutting it off here and making the Glasgow part of the trip a separate entry. In Burns's famous words, "The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley." Cheers! (Scottish all-purpose word that seems to mean hello, thanks, and good-bye, depending on the situation)

The Twelfth Doctor

A little over a week ago, BBC One made it official: Peter Capaldi has been chosen to portray the title character on its long-running show, "Doctor Who." He is the twelfth actor to pilot the TARDIS, and the first Doctor to start off another half-century of the show. The fiftieth anniversary of the show, which began in 1963, less than a year after I was born, is coming up fast, and some kind of top-secret celebration in televisual form is being planned for November. But I'll write more on that anniversary in the fall.

Peter Capaldi

Peter Capaldi, who will be taking over from Matt Smith, the youngest actor ever to play the Timelord (age 26 when he started in 2009), is the same age (55) as the first and oldest actor to play him, William Hartnell. This has reportedly stirred up a storm of protest among the younger fans who only came to "Doctor Who" this millenium (see the article on the Daily Mail Online) and who think he's too old to play the Doctor. To them I say: rubbish! I have been more than a little dismayed at seeing younger and younger Doctors, and I think Capaldi will be excellent in the role. He's a comic actor, but he can play dramatic parts, and he has more than a little edge and quite a bit of whimsy--a perfect mix for the Doctor. He has just enough of an eldritch appearance to make one think he could possibly be an alien. While the Doctor should not be conventionally handsome, there has been a tendency in the revival to make him more sexually appealing--there has to be a reason all those young people drop everything and run away with him across space and time--and here again Capaldi fills the bill. He has a certain magnetism, a way of commanding the room with his gaze (ethereal and chilling as the angel Islington in the television mini-series version of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere), a facility for comedy and improvisation (as the abrasive and foul-mouthed spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker in the half-scripted, half-improvised series "The Thick of It"), and an ability to show vulnerability (as OCD- suffering Head of News Randall Brown in the second season of "The Hour"). He is the third Scot to take on the role of the Doctor (the other two being Sylvester McCoy (Doctor #7) and David Tennant (Doctor #10) ; it will be interesting to see if they allow him to keep his accent. So far, only Christopher Eccleston (Doctor #9) spoke in anything but the King's English (By far one of my favorite bits of dialogue is when Companion Rose Tyler says to Eccleston's Doctor, "You're an alien? You sound like you're from the North." Doctor, defensively: "Lots of planets have a north!").

TARDIS exterior

TARDIS interior (current)

All right, so what's all the fuss about? Trying to describe the appeal of "Doctor Who" to my friends who aren't fans is almost impossible. Either you buy into the premise or you don't. And what is the premise? All you Whovians out there who are reading this can skip ahead three paragraphs while I explain the show as concisely as I can. The Doctor is a two-hearted, highly intelligent, humaniform alien from Gallifrey, a planet in a distant galaxy, from a species called Timelords, who have learned to navigate through space and time in vehicles they call TARDISes. TARDIS is an acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space" (How come Timelords speak English and use a Roman alphabet? All right, go away! You ask too many questions!); they are bigger on the inside (something about folding space within–stop asking so many questions!); and they have a chameleon circuit that can cause its exterior to blend in with its surroundings. The Doctor's chameleon circuit has been stuck since the sixties, however, so it always remains a police call box (Wait, if he's so smart, why can't he fix it? That's it, leave the room, please!).

Timelords have a clever little trick to outwit mortality: whenever death approaches, as long as their body remains more or less intact, they can regenerate, transforming into a completely new person with an utterly new personality. This allowed William Hartnell, the original Doctor, to leave the show when he got tired of it, but for the show to go on with a completely different actor at the helm. Very handy, that! Originally, it was claimed that Timelords can regenerate up to a maximum of twelve times, allowing for thirteen total incarnations, but they seem to have jettisoned that rule some time ago. A small group of diehards insist that there can only be two more Doctors, but we all know he will go on forever, or at least until the show is cancelled again.

Timelords have a non-intervention policy with regard to events in the universe–they're not allowed to mess with time and causality to change outcomes (sort of the Timelord version of the Prime Directive from "Star Trek"). The Doctor, however, is a renegade Timelord, who stole his TARDIS, and he interferes all the time, dashing about the universe and pretty much saving it a hundred times over (For a hilarious spoof of this, watch Rowan Atkinson in Steven Moffat's "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death," a comedy sketch written and aired for the Red Nose Day charity telethon in 1999). He has a name, but it's apparently a secret and he only ever introduces himself as The Doctor. He usually travels about with human (he has a soft spot in his hearts for Earth) or alien companions, and for a while with a female Timelord (oh all right, I'll say Timelady, but it sounds stupid), Romana. These Companions are stand-ins for us, the audience: they are the means by which the Doctor explains his actions and relates to us as human beings. The Doctor has a nemesis, supposedly a childhood friend, who only goes by the epithet of The Master, and who is all about destruction and enslavement. There is also a cast of rotating baddies: the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Autons, etc. Believe me, if you're not a fan, you're not going to care.

Tom Baker as The Doctor

Okay, now we're up to speed. Before we proceed any further, however, let me say for the record that I was not always a Whovian. As a girl, I was a Trekkie, not at all interested in "Doctor Who." In high school my friend Diane was the Whovian par excellence; she even knitted herself one of those 12-foot long scarves that Tom Baker's Doctor (#4) wore. Actually, there was apparently also a 14-foot version used from Season 12 on (for directions on making these and other variants, there is a handy-dandy website dedicated to this, with minute instructions about yarn weight and colors. Really. People do this). No, I started watching in college, when the president one year of our science fiction club, Katherine, was a complete Doctor Who fanatic. She had dreams of being the first female Doctor. My viewing started out casually enough as mockery of the cheesy special effects (you could practically see the wires used to pull the miniatures across tiny fake alien landscapes), the ridiculous electronic music, and the hilarious alien costumes. When bubble wrap was new, they wrapped one of the aliens in this to simulate bumpy skin. I don't remember how it came across at the time, but when I watched this episode recently with my children, we kept gasping with laughter every time the aliens appeared.

But then, gradually, as time wore on, I started to care. I had favorite Companions. I had a favorite Doctor (Peter Davison, #5)! The weird, otherworldly synthesized title theme music could make my pulse race as I gathered with the other faithful in the living room of the dorm to watch (almost no one had a t.v. in her room). We would exchange little catchphrases. We would wield toilet plungers at each other and intone in gravelly monotones: "Exterminate!" Yeah, you kind of had to be there....

Along with the president of our college science fiction club, there are many who feel that the time has come for the Doctor to be something other than a straight British white male.  In his Aug. 6 Rolling Stone article, Peter Holslin addresses this issue directly: "...as far as the story goes, it's hardly a stretch to imagine the Doctor as a woman, person of color or LGBT." In an Aug. 6 New York Times op-ed piece, Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender English professor at Colby College, compares the lack of imagination in casting the Doctor to the glass ceilings faced by candidates to the papacy, or to the United States presidency. Yet the progress we've made on those fronts gives her hope that even a show stuck in the '60s, just as the TARDIS is stuck in the shape of a '60s-era police call box, can crash its way through that glass ceiling: "As the producers think about whom they want to take on the role next, they should keep in mind the way people’s hopes are lifted when they see someone breaking the glass ceiling, even when it’s for something as seemingly trivial as a hero on a science-fiction program. Equal opportunity matters—in Doctor Who’s universe as well as our own."

John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness

Freema Aygeman as Martha Jones

I would agree with many of the sentiments expressed above, with a few reservations. One, the Doctor has to be British. It's a quintessentially British show. Would you watch if he were American? French?? Really? You would? I think not. Two, the Doctor is a man, just as Romana (Doctor #4's Timelady companion) was a woman throughout all of her regenerations, and River Song (who is human and not a Timelady at all, but it's complicated), remains a woman/girl throughout all of her regenerations. But, three, yes, why not? Why can't the Doctor be black, or Asian, or gay? It would be a refreshing change of pace.

Russell T. Davies

Russell T. Davies, when he was executive producer and lead writer of the show from 2005-2010, made sure to diversify the cast in just such refreshing ways. Davies, who rose to British reknown with his show "Queer as Folk," a fictional recreation of his experiences in the Manchester gay scene, gave us Martha Jones, the Doctor's first African Companion; Donna Noble, the first Companion played by an actress who was older than the actor playing the Doctor; and my son's favorite Companion of all time, the flamboyantly charming and pan-sexual Captain Jack Harkness. Under Davies's tenure, people the Doctor encountered along the way were Indian, African, Asian, Caucasian, and Cat. There were lesbian and gay couples (married ones, even!); there were male and female and alien-of-indeterminate-gender love interests for Captain Jack to flirt with ("Can't I say hello to anyone?"). The Companions all had families, messy private lives, and people who loved them and worried about them.

Steven Moffat

Since Steven Moffat took over as executive producer and lead writer in 2010, there has been a definite narrowing of the social spectrum of "Doctor Who." While some traditionalists have welcomed this as a return to what they see as the Ur-"Doctor Who," I really enjoyed the fresh vision Davies brought to the show, and I miss the diversification of the cast. I especially liked the incorporation of the Companions' families into the storylines, and the sexualization of the Doctor. In his original incarnations, he was sort of neuter: a kindly uncle or older brother figure. Under Davies, the Doctor grew up, and developed a (heavily repressed) sexuality. Now Moffat is trying to shove him back into the closet, metaphorically speaking. Even though the Doctor never acts on his urges, he does seem to express a preference (heterosexual, thus far). I could easily see a gay Doctor being the next step in his evolution. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the viewing public is ready for that, and Steven Moffat is definitely not going to go in that direction.

Idris Elba

Paterson Joseph

So we're left with race. Specifically, it is high time for a black Doctor. Among male African-British actors of the correct age range, there are many possibilities: Idris Elba, Paterson Joseph, Shaun Parkes, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and David Harewood, to name a few. Paterson Joseph apparently lost out to Matt Smith in the last go-round (a mistake, in my opinion), and writer Neil Gaiman claimed on Tumblr that a black actor was offered the part of the Doctor in an earlier incarnation and turned it down (Aug. 7 Telegraph online article), but said he wasn't at liberty to reveal who it was (My guess, based on nothing at all, was that it was Idris Elba, who has become too much of a hot property since appearing on HBO's "The Wire" as Stringer Bell, and now with his own hit show in Britain, "Luther").

Shaun Parkes

Chiwetel Ejiofor

David Harewood

Although Harewood, Parkes, and Joseph have already appeared on "Doctor Who" as guest roles in other episodes, there is definitely precedent for subsequently casting one of them as the Doctor: Colin Baker (Doctor #6) first appeared as a minor role under an earlier Doctor. While these actors are on the younger side (except for Joseph), they all possess both a suitable gravitas and a certain dangerous, mad edge that is required for the persona of the Doctor.

So, while I look forward to seeing what Peter Capaldi does with the role, I hope the producers have the courage to look further afield in the Doctor's thirteenth incarnation, whenever that may take place.

All right, all right, this post has gone on quite long enough. Quite possibly I have wasted far too much time pondering an issue that has slim to no real-world repercussions. Except that I agree with Prof. Boylan, that role models matter, whether it's the Pope, the President, or a madman in a blue box.