"I hate the term commitment rings," she said - and I pondered it a bit.  If it isn't an engagement ring, or a wedding ring, but it is a symbol of love and commitment, what else is one supposed to call it?

Then of course, there is our communal queer history of concepts like engagement and marriage representing things we were not allowed to do by law.  And so what we could do, was commit verbally, in front of our friends, any family who hadn't disowned us and our cats.  We could get Wiccan and c...

Partner.  Is it just me, or did that word once signify a subtle way of not specifying the gender of one's lover?  And didn't more queer than straight people use it, or have I been fooling myself?  In my often muddled mind, when I lived in the United Kingdom in the nineties, "partner" was a useful signal that you were in fact talking to a queer person, because straight people just said girlfriend or boyfriend without fear of being discriminated against for it and of course, in those days, only...

How many lesbians and their husbands did Lin Sampson talk to before she wrote her somewhat mystifying column "Bride on the gravy train," one wonders?  In her version of things, "many" men looking for second wives choose lesbians, for a variety of cliched reasons.

“I’m sick of all those straight women. They bleed you. I want someone who doesn’t think that a blowjob deserves a Prada handbag,” said one. (The Sunday Times Lifestyle, May 10 2009)

It would be exhaustingly boring to tackle eve...