February 19, 2008



IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


THE SINGLE LIFE


To hear conservatives tell it, the nuclear family consisting of the working husband, the stay at home wife, and two children is the way things were meant to be. Former Vice President Dan Quayle made a big thing about "family values," which became a staple of Republican rhetoric. To be single, especially by choice, is a terrible thing to such people. The nuclear family is supposed to offer societal stability, whereas we singles are a threat of some kind. Laws, including tax laws, are designed to discriminate against single people. This article by Bella M. DePaulo is at www.alternet.org:



I'm fifty-four years old and I have always been single. I love my single life. But for a long time I rarely said that out loud. I thought I was the only happy single person.



I didn't love everything about my single life. I didn't like that "poor thing" look I'd get when others first learned that I was single. I didn't like their assumption that I must be miserable and lonely and pining for a partner.



There were other things I didn't like that I thought I could pin on my single status, but I wasn't really sure. For example, sometimes at work colleagues with partners would assume that I could cover the tasks that no one else wanted. Maybe they presumed that since I was single, I didn't have a life and so had nothing better to do with my time. Socially, I was invited to lunch with my coupled colleagues during the week but not to their dinner and movie outings over the weekends.