“It’s not about procreation. It’ll never be about procreation. Neither one of us is getting pregnant anytime soon. So we have to be a little more honest. This is about pleasure, this about getting off, and doing it together.” — Damon Demarco, from Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together

Duh. We get it Tony. Damon and Hunter are gay.

Among the various outrages I’ve been accused of, subtlety is not one of them. I’m a ham-fisted sentimentalist, and proud of it. But today’s blog post “The War on Contraception is a War on Sex” on Violet Blue’s TinyNibbles.com has helped me finally the words to my own personal subtext to the opening of D&H.

I am a breeder. Not just a breeder, but a breeder who has bred. More than once I have impregnated my wife, and then watch as her belly grew larger and larger, until they day when finally it could grow no more, and a baby, a new life emerged from her body, driving her nearly mad with hours of agonizing pain in the process. I treasure my children, and regard them as the greatest among many gifts my union with my wife has brought me. I know as well as anyone else that conceiving children can be one of the great joys of having sex.

But I deeply resent the suggestion, the assertion that by taking steps to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, or engaging in intimate acts that could never result in pregnancy that we have somehow degraded our love for one another, or debased the intimate time we spend together. I resent it when someone says that about my wearing a condom or my wife using contraceptives, and I resent it when someone says that about two men loving one another or two women loving one another. However it’s said, it’s an outright assault on the most precious, personal aspect of the relationship between me and my wife.

I didn’t demand my wife prove her fertility before we were wed, nor did she ask the same of me. We became lovers, and then became husband and wife in large measure because of the sexual desire we felt for one another. And I deeply resent the assertion that the way I feel about my wife – the need for her I feel, the hunger for her I feel, the way I adore looking at her naked body and the way that fills me with desire – can only be justified by the possibility of conception.

I love our children. I am profoundly moved by the knowledge that their fleshly existence is a product of my and my wife’s fleshy union; and I cannot imagine my life with out them. But our children do not sanctify our marriage, they do not consecrate our lovemaking. They do not excuse the carnal desire I feel for my wife, or the pleasure I take from reveling in her flesh. And I wonder just what goes on inside the mind of a person who would seek to heap these unwarranted burdens of justification, consecration and excuse upon my children or their own. It seems cruel and sad and perverse to insist any child must carry such burdens.

And fortunately ours do not.

Because it’s not about procreation for us either. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. It’s about pleasure; my pleasure, my wife’s pleasure. It’s about getting off – and doing it together!