King of the Hill

As the quality of The Simpsons has waned, my husband and I have gained a new appreciation for King of the Hill. Admittedly, this show's quality has also waned inevitably with age, but it is in syndication on Fox, and we enjoy catching an episode here and there. One thing I've noticed about the show, and something I greatly appreciate about it, is that the main character, Hank Hill, is a truly good husband and father. Like Homer Simpson, so many other TV fathers are bumbling self-centered idiots. They always seem to redeem themselves by the end of the episode, but getting out of the doghouse is a nearly constant challenge for them. Not so for Hank Hill; he's the opposite of the usual TV father. I would marry a Hank Hill in a heartbeat.

But Hank Hill has his flaws too. In the episode I watched last night, Hank is supposed to take his 12-year-old son, Bobby, on a hunting trip to kill his first deer and become a man. But Hank is nervous about making the trip because he'll have to spend hours alone, talking, with his son. Hank is uncomfortable talking about anything particularly personal or private, yet Bobby has been brought up by his mother to be open and honest. Due to his fear, Hank procrastinates on getting a hunting license, and on the day of the trip, he discovers that all the hunting licenses have been sold out. Bobby will have to remain a boy for another year. The story is poetically resolved as Hank, hoping to give his son the rite of passage into manhood that he is due, allows Bobby to drive his truck. A deer runs out into the street and Bobby hits it, finally getting his kill so that he may be a man.

This episode pokes plenty of fun at this particular rite of passage, presumably a Texan one, that requires a boy to kill in order to be considered a man, but it never mocks rites of passage themselves. In the last line of the episode, as the neighbors are admiring Bobby's kill, he says,

"I couldn't have done it without my dad."

This reminded me of my husband's assertion that in order for a boy to become a man, he must demonstrate physical superiority to his father. Perhaps that was my husband's particular rite of passage, and clearly such rites do vary for different people. Nevertheless, I'm detecting a pattern that a boy's initiation into manhood seems to always involve, and perhaps requires, the participation of the boy's father. Is this part of the reason that so many fatherless sons have so many behavioral and emotional problems, and as adults seem to never grow up?

The Simpsons

My husband and I are big Simpsons fans. The quality of the show has been going downhill for several years now, but we still watch every Sunday night anyway, hoping for a bit of the brilliance we used to enjoy. Last night there wasn't anything much on offer, and there was one point of the show that seriously disappointed me.

Homer has managed to put the entire fire department out of commission, and on the news Kent Brockman interviews a man hanging out of the second story window of a burning house and asks him how he feels considering the fact that no one is coming to save him. The man in the burning house responds to this effect,

"It's not as bad as the fact that somewhere gays are being allowed to marry. That's the real emergency."

Kent Brockman sarcastically replies,

"Once again, tragedy has brought out the best in us."

The point the Simpsons writers are apparently trying to make is that with so much tragedy in our world, paying attention to the issue of gay marriage is petty and stupid. However, it is only those opposed to gay marriage who are being petty and stupid. One is left to assume that those who are fighting for gay marriage while hanging out the window of a burning house are doing just fine. But if it's so petty to defend traditional marriage despite all the other tragedies we face, then it must be just as silly for gay marriage supporters to be focusing on this issue.

It is only through a major paradigm shift in my own understanding of what marriage is and what purpose it serves at both a personal and public level that I have managed to have a successful marriage myself. Marriage is a fundamental social institution, and I personally love my marriage, so I understand why some gays want to be able to get married while still maintaining their gay identity. But if they care so much about marriage that they feel they should have a right to it even against the will of the majority of Americans, then they need to understand and respect the opinions of those who also care so much about marriage that they don't want to fundamentally change it. Those who defend marriage are not simply being petty. They are on one side of the conflict of goods that David Blankenhorn details in The Future of Marriage. And to me, they are much more persuasive.