As a 27-year-old adolescent, I was fascinated by Larry Smith's article on drugs and parenthood. Aside from a couple of dull experiences with pot, I've done no drugs harder than an occasional gin and tonic. But if I have kids, I don't intend to tell them to stay drug free -- I hope to teach them to think for themselves, which includes drugs. Drugs didn't interest me, but they did interest friends and family -- who are all fine.

While not giving your kids your personal life story down to the grainy Polaroids makes sense, I hope that all the parents who are preparing to do a 180 on drugs will ask themselves why. None of their "zero tolerance for you" arguments made sense to me, and I don't even want to do drugs.

-- Mary Westervelt

I have a daughter (3) and a son (18 months). I plan on being very honest with them about my experiences with drug use, just as I will with alcohol use. My own parental policy is this: You are an adult after you get out of high school. Before that point, you don't drink or smoke or do drugs. Period. After graduation, we can sit together and pass the bong if they so desire. I won't kid them: Drugs are great -- as long as you are ready for them.

-- Paul Prunty

There's a good reason not to use drugs as a parent. And it's a simple one: They are illegal. You can debate the rights and wrongs of that all you like, but ask your writer friend in Brooklyn: What happens if he gets busted buying pot? What happens then to his children?

Perhaps -- since he's presumably affluent, white and a recreational user -- not all that much.

However, is it worth the risk to your family?

-- Heather Murray

I grew up in a household in which alcohol was abundant and the hints about my mother's pot use were literally all over the house. When I went through my teenage years I experimented just like everyone else. I also got a good taste of how much was too much by the images of my mother not really being aware due to her "occasional" use of drugs. Now, after I have left home, graduated and am becoming successful, I have left my nostalgia and drug experimentation in the past -- while I watch my mother fall apart from her drug dependency in the present. One of the key ideas that need to be conveyed to children at any age is that their experimentation must be controlled and not everyone is as successful as their mommy and daddy turned out to be.

-- Hilary Fussell

As the mother of two and an avid pot fan, I can empathize with the themes of this article. However, I think you overlooked a very important issue.

In my city, there are drug task forces (operated by the local police departments) that lecture at the elementary schools and preach the "just say no" mantra -- to the point of encouraging children to turn in their drug-using family members and friends.

As smokers, we can and must confine any activity to strictly non-child times and areas, for fear of being "ratted out" by our 7- or 8-year-old at school.

How, then, will we as parents ever "compete" with the "just and moral" advice offered by the police at school? My children have been told nothing but evil about any and all drugs by local law enforcement here since kindergarten. If I choose to talk about this later in life, they may choose to turn me in!

-- Kristen

[Read "What Does Marriage Mean?" by Dan Savage.]

Thank you, Dan Savage, for saying something that needed to be said. I find myself often in the strange position of being in favor of gay marriage because I am so appalled at the reasoning of its opponents and because, in the long run, it will advance the cause of gay rights for the rest of the world to see gays and lesbians involved in this "conservative institution." But frankly, were it legal in my state, I am not so sure I would want to participate. It would be a matter of weighing the legal and financial advantages (and disadvantages). Like most other gay men, we are not raising children, so there is no overriding need. It certainly would not change this relationship after 25 years. Even if my parents were alive, it would not make them finally accept my partner as a member of our family.

What I do worry about is that it will make us "normal." Even at age 50, the idea of being a "sexual outlaw" is appealing, and I don't know how much legitimacy I want. But I worry about gays and lesbians of the future -- will they seek the house with the white picket fence and two kids playing in the backyard? Will gays cease to cast a jaundiced eye on social conformity and instead idealize a life of banality in middle America? The question is not, Are we ready for marriage? but, Is marriage ready for us?

-- Larry Firrantello

Thank you for Dan Savage's thoughtful article on marriage and monogamy. While I concur that monogamy is not natural for most people, jealousy for a partner's non-monogamy is natural for many -- if not all. I think that is also true for many who say that they want an open relationship. For those rare couples that thrive in non-exclusive relationships, that's their personal choice and it's not anyone's place to judge. But moral choices are not necessarily natural ones. Monogamy is a kind of bargain where we forgo what we might want for ourselves in exchange for our natural desire for the same from our partner.

-- Henry Edwards

Hallelujah, Dan Savage! We were starting to think that we were the only totally committed, sex-positive, not-quite-monogamous, nine-years-and-counting lesbian couple who feel very resistant to the idea of gay marriage as certification that our relationship will exclude all sexual encounters with other people till death do us part. And maybe we are. But at least we know that others in the gay community are experiencing the same sense of dislocation as our once-proudly deviant community scrambles to demonstrate its total conformity to a dysfunctional straight mainstream. A relationship that accommodates non-monogamy while honoring the feelings and needs of both partners takes a lot of work, but the rewards are rich, and our particular union is thriving as a result. It is sad indeed that the need for external approval is pushing the gay and lesbian community away from applying its collective imagination to the challenges posed by long-term relationships.

-- Maia Ettinger

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