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I Do/I Don't/I Differ
San Francisco couple turn their wedding into a literary project
by Jameson Currier
Don't expect to find new short stories by fiction writers Ian Philips and Greg Wharton in their latest anthology, I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage--the San Francisco editors and writers who make up the publishing team of Suspect Thoughts Press have assembled an impressive 132 contributions from journalists, comedians, politicians, and literary talents writing on the pros and cons and "I don't really cares" of same-sex weddings.
"We decided that our contribution would be the book itself," Wharton said. "A diversity of position and people and identity."
The newly-published 384-page book was born after Wharton, 42, and Philips, 38, were wed February 19, 2004, at a ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco. Shortly after their ceremony, the couple received an email to attend a "talking points" session, designed to aid recently wed same-sex partners during interviews with the national media who were covering the developing story.
"I sort of festered over that," Philips said. "I know how 'talking points' are used, but I didn't want to have to hit notes."
Instead of buying into a pre-set notion of what to say, Philips decided another tactic. One morning at breakfast he wrote down the idea for the new anthology on a napkin and passed it across the table to Wharton.
"We had been looking for a nonfiction idea," Philips said. "From there it turned into a quick Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland-Let's-Put-On-a-Show!"
"We decided that if we were going to do it, we were going to have to do it now," Wharton added. "We wanted it out while it was really hot and still debated."
Since the rise of same-sex weddings as a hot-button national political issue because of recent legislative debates in key battleground states such as Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts, publishers have been responding with a variety of titles on the topic. Among the new books currently on the market are David Moats' Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage, Jonathan Rauch's Creating Gay Marriage: Why It is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, George Chauncey's Why Marriage?: The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality, and attorney Evan Wolfson's Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry. Wharton and Philips sought to make their anthology stand out from the others by presenting a variety of voices in a variety of creative forms and opinions. I Do/I Don't includes non-fiction, poetry, personal essays, short stories, op-eds, vows, love letters, and rants.
In March of this year, Wharton and Philips began sending out more than 400 emails requesting submissions to the literary project, only limiting potential contributors to a maximum 2000 word-count. From the nearly two hundred pieces they had received for consideration by the beginning of July, the editing team whittled the number down to a manageable 132, which meant nixing not only some good writing, but their own contributions.
Philips said that the sheer volume of contributors and variety of viewpoints necessitated the duo to arrange the contributions alphabetically, by author's last name.
"A lot of the pieces don't fall into a specific category because we left it open not only in form of expression but in opinion," Philips said. "We've broken them into three different kinds of pieces, however. I do. I don't. And I differ."
"And a lot of writing that falls into one of those categories also have thoughts about the other one," Wharton added. "There are a lot of in-between pieces. Or thoughts on both sides."
A Look Inside
Among the contributors to I Do/I Don't are journalists and syndicated columnists Jay Blotcher, Victoria A. Brownworth, Michael Bronski, Jim Provenzano, Dale Carpenter, the Bay Area Reporter's zak syzmanski, the Village Voice's Tristan Taormino, the Advocate's Judy Wieder, and Sharon "Vinnie" Levin, managing editor of The Liberty Press, the gay and lesbian monthly in Wichita, Kansas. Several authors with books out on same-sex marriage also weigh in here, among them Wolfson, Rauch, and Davina Kotulski, author of Why You Should Give a Damn About Gay Marriage. Notable literary talents collected in the anthology include Dorothy Allison, Christopher Bram, Lesléa Newman, Cheryl Clarke, Felice Picano, Patricia Nell Warren, Sarah Schulman, Eileen Myles, Patrick Califia, Antler, Thomas Glave, and Robert Glück. Many contributors are also published for the first time, including San Francisco comedians Dana Cory and Maggie Dolan, Cleveland AIDS activist Gil Kudrin, and David Christensen, a classical pianist. Also checking in on the issue of gay marriage are comedians Bob Smith and Margaret Cho, performance artist Tim Miller, and Keith Boykin of Showtime's American Candidate.
Among those who also answered Wharton and Philips submission call were Karen Stogdill, the couple's tax accountant, and her partner Kris Hill, also a tax accountant. Several other pieces were co-written by couples, including Cynthia Burack, a professor at Ohio State, and her partner Laree Martin, an executive in the U.S. Postal Service, authors and self-described "aging sensitive lesbian schoolteachers" Ali Liebegott and Anna Joy Springer, and Rick Reed and Nicholas Reed, a gay father and gay son. Among the heterosexual couples contributing articles were Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot, founders of the Alternatives to Marriage Project. The national nonprofit organization advocating for equality and fairness for unmarried people is one of five organizations which Suspect Thoughts will donate a portion of the net sales of I Do/I Don't. Other organizations receiving funds will be ACLU, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Freedom to Marry, and the International Gay & Lesbian Rights Commission.
Wharton and Philips have also arranged an impressive schedule of promotional activities across the country to coincide with the publication of I Do/Don't. Readings are scheduled for Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.
Philips noted that the number of contributors to I Do/I Don't are evenly divided between west coast and east coast writers. I Do/I Don't also includes pieces from Canadians Michael Rowe, Douglas Ferguson, Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco, and Dani Couture, and Australians Andy Quan, Neal Drinnan, Geoff Parkes, and Dean Durber.
Their Own Stories
Philips, an Oklahoma native who has lived in San Francisco for 16 years, met Wharton after receiving a fan letter from him about one of his short stories. "I was more excited that a publisher was writing me," he said. "It took me a while to locate his headshot on the website."
After an epistolary courtship, Wharton, who had been living in Chicago, packed his bags and moved to San Francisco to move in with Philips. "We really bonded during our drive out in the U-haul," Philips added.
Wharton started Suspect Thoughts as an online magazine in 2000 where readers could find "cross genre erotic writing and a lot of authors I enjoyed reading," he said. "There weren't many outlets for something that was pansexual--or a mix of genre and gender."
Wharton brought together writing that was either horror erotica, speculative erotica, or "undefininably experimental" to create Suspect Thoughts. The online magazine was so successful he decided to produce a print anthology and, in the fall of 2001, Suspect Thoughts Press published its first title, Of The Flesh, and included many of the writers first introduced in Wharton's online magazine. Since then, the Press has grown to publishing 12 titles a year, six in the spring, six in the fall, and has committed projects into the 2007 season. Among their forthcoming titles are Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms by Justin Chin and One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, a new novel by D. Travers Scott.
Suspect Thoughts has also published short story collections by both members of the couple: Johnny Was & Other Tall Tales by Wharton and Satyriasis: Literotica2 by Philips, a follow-up to his Lambda Literary award-winning See Dick Deconstruct: Literotica for the Satyrically Bent.
"We both have novels that we are working on," Wharton said. "But the Press has taken over our writing time. But we are proactively starting to make sure that that does not continue to happen because we are both authors. There will always be priorities now that the Press is this size. Now it is a matter of forcing ourselves that our writing is also a priority."
Jameson Currier is a freelance journalist and author.
His most recent book is Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex.
email Jameson Currier
back to the I Do/I Don't: Queers on Marriage page
I Do/I Don't/I Differ
© 2004 Jameson Currier
The work featured in this journal is under copyright protection
by the individual authors and artists and may not be duplicated
or reprinted without their permission.
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