If you want to see what's up with gay America these days, forget "Will & Grace" and visit North Halsted Market Days on Chicago's north side instead. Held on the second weekend of each August, the street fair blocks off 8-10 blocks of some of Chicago's trendiest shops and restaurants in the Wrigleyville area. With 400 vendors and dozens of bands -- including the likes of Spyro Gyra and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy -- the event bills itself as "the largest street fair in the midwest." More to the point, it's also one of the largest gay festivals in North America, drawing tens of thousands of gaylesbi citizens. It's one of those rare occasions where heterosexuals are in the slim minority, providing a peek at a culture which is, as they say, flamboyant. It makes for some interesting people-watching, although the sight of 10,000 shirtless weight-lifters in identical Doogie Howser haircuts or shaved heads grows dull soon enough. It makes you wonder if Bravo Channel's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is some kind of put-on, since most of the folks at the festival looked about as stylish as a sack of potatoes. But I suppose it's tit-for-tat, since I was pleased to note to my wife that I was the only guy in the whole lurching mob of thousands with a braided pony-tail; something, apparently, which no gay Chicagoan would be caught dead wearing. More entertaining are the devotees of the Village People style factory, wandering around in kilts, leather shorts, cop caps, beehive wigs, heavy eye makeup and chains connected to their nipples. On the more serious side, we heard a number of references to gay and lesbian Americans getting married in Toronto under Canada's new, relaxed laws on marriage. Two women playing in a grunge band called The Lovelies announced that they had been married in Canada the week before, and the headline story of a local weekly was about two chaps getting married in Toronto. Then too, in 2000, Vermont began honoring "civil unions," a politically-safe euphemism for marriage, offering gay and lesbian citizens the same rights as married folks. This is scary stuff for conservatives -- those self-proclaimed champions of individual liberty. In response to the creeping threat of gay marriage, 37 states and the federal government have adopted "Defense of Marriage Acts," which, as Newsweek notes, "define marriage as applying only to a man and a woman, and -- significantly -- bar recognition of same-sex marriage from other states." Apparently, it's okay for gay persons to pay taxes, serve their country as soldiers ("don't ask, don't tell), or die storming Muslim terrorists on a highjacked airliner... but marriage? Now there's an institution which folks still respect here in the new Babylon. Unfortunately for Defense of Marriage types, the horse is already out of the barn, and over the next generation, you're likely to see many, many more gay and lesbian Americans traveling to Canada or Vermont to sanctify their unions, if only symbolically,s and not honored in their own home towns. Eventually, with TV and movies wallpapered with gay and lesbian characters for decades, people will forget what the fuss is all about and gay marriage will be as common as Ozzy & Harriett (or Ozzy & Ozzy and Harriett & Harriett as the case may be). The bigger question for straight people who don't want to see the institution of marriage "demeaned" might be taking Jesus's advice and getting their own house in order. Today, marriage comes across more as an easily-abandoned fling than as a holy commitment. The latest news from Malaysia is that you can now divorce your wife by sending her three cell phone text messages, repeating the words "I divorce you." Are things that much different here, where film stars such as Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fly off the track before the ring is even warm on her finger? Then there's the incredible hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, which allows for the annulment of marriages that are decades old, with children involved. With all the revelations of gay priests over the past few years, you'd think that Catholics and Episcopalians would be in the front line of supporting same-sex marriages under a preach-what-you-practice doctrine. Having been divorced once myself, and knowing hundreds of others with the same history, I know that many of us stand before God and make a holy vow that we will stick together through sickness and health, good times and bad, and then flame off in a devilish rage when the luster wears thin. Our holiest, most sacred vow, presumably to a creator who will judge us for eternity, is cast aside like dirty underwear. What audacity, what hypocrisy, for married people to dictate morality to gay and lesbian persons when we are so often imperfect ourselves.
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