In other words, you can be as gay as an Arrow. You can learn to condemn fellow gays who aren't as mono-minded as you are. Arrow's editors, unabashed pushers of gay-male monogamy, proclaim that their non-monogamous brethren are mere holders of "a license for perpetual adolescence."

Will this Arrow magazine thing succeed? There are depressing publishing precedents in the heterosexual community which surely must give its editors hope. Yes, the biggest and longest-selling mass circulation publications are, hold tight to your dildo Dennis, bridal magazines.

Just last week (Friday) the New York Times featured a front-page rap on gay marriages. On the following day the San Francisco Chronicle suggested that: "If you want to know where the gay and civil rights movement is headed, take a look at its newest publications. The latest entries are more marriage-minded and family-oriented and just plain cuddlier than ever before."

So says the mainstream media. But its been wrong before, n'est pas?

Arrow Magazine's first issue, destined no doubt to cause community-wide controversy, will be forthcoming in June. Its editors, who were lying in bed—presumably as a duo—when they ingeniously thought up their "Real Men Cuddle" slogan, believe that such cuddliness itself captures "everything" they want to say in their new magazine.

"We are finally getting our place at the table," they proclaim, making an allusion to a Bruce Bawer's book, A Place at the Table, an assimilationist work that same-sex radicals greeted with stark promises to turn Mr. Bawer's tidy table—the status quo-- upside down.

Andrew Sullivan, a practicing Roman Catholic and author of Virtually Normal, is another such advocate of marriage as the gay panacea. In fact, Sullivan has preached, once gay males and lesbians have won the right to marry the revolution will necessarily be complete. Oh, really, Andrew? I think not.

Reflecting on Francis and Horne's very proper prose, a titillating verse from R.F. Laird's Boomer Bible comes readily to mind as Harry, a principal character in the Bible, speaks from the back of a church following a priest-officiated hetero-marriage: "Those whom mere words have joined together," he says, " may not now be separated except by teams of lawyers, at a cost of thousands and thousands of dollars. Is this not a wonder to behold?" (Book of Vinnie, 51:13)

But if you long to be forever monogamous, relax. You're not alone. The wider culture perpetually sanctions "sacred" one-on-one traps, after all. It tells you you're not healthy or complete without a legally certified mate. Arrow Magazine is counting on your eager support as a subscriber.

Arrow will give you, it promises, interviews with successfully monogamous homosexual couples. Oh boy! Remember Bob & Rob? Well, guys like those fellows will be showcased except without any nice abs to make them as interesting and without undue focus on any post-marriage failures such as followed Bob & Rob's well-meaning but short-lived public attempts role-modeling gay-male marriages.

True, muscles aren't everything. Nor will a tryst a day keep the doctor away. But to this reviewer, Arrow—which calls itself "pro-commitment"—appears destined to suffer less because of its desire to see gay relationships legitimized than because of its editorial naivete. The editors themselves, obviously, aren't particularly good writers. (See arrowmag.com)

While same-sex couples surely should have all of the rights and privileges presently enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts, astute comments by Urvashi Vaid in a recent issue of The Advocate seem more pointedly on target. Vaid, a former executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, writes that it is: "one of the ironies of history that today the mainstream of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movement focuses more on bolstering traditional, patriarchal institutions such as marriage, family and monogamy than it does on questioning their legitimacy."

To this reviewer, the best relationships are those that do not depend on law, signatures, and the like. "Were you looking to be held together by lawyers, or by an agreement on paper?" asks our national poet, Walt Whitman. "Nay," he says, "nothing shall so cohere."

And if Whitman's perspective fails to convince, there's always Lao Tzu who—500 years before Jesus—said: "Things that go together naturally don't need to be tied."

Vows which precede long-term relationships are sweet sentiments indeed, but they often divert important attentions best paid to more intimate interpersonal matters. Instead of looking within our budding relationships and building on their actualities, vow-makers tend to put an undue outward emphasis on whether or not their "sacred vows" have been kept. The vow, in other words, becomes more important than what's really going on between them. They miss much by putting their focus on a legalized promise.

But if into marital bondage you must go, by all means it is your life. But must we others sit in your choice of church while you ceremoniously entwine yourselves as an eternal couple, publicly proclaiming your intention to stick with each other through thin and thick?

Thanks, but I don't go to any conventional church. I wish you well. The only alter, however, wherein I'll celebrate or commit to anything at all is housed by no outward pious structure. It has no pews, no ministers, no advance formulas or expectations to recite. Rather, its deep in another locale altogether—within the free domains of an ever-changing mind. From this inner realm, one can gladly realize, we're at liberty to come and go as we please. Our personal stakes in our individualities will add to, not subtract from our hopes for a greater measure of togetherness.

Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet says it best: