Harris Wofford: the second time around
Democratic bigwig and former US senator Harris Wofford, 90, is engaged to be married for the second time.
To a man.
A man who is 50 years younger than Wofford.
It’s that last part that’s probably the shock to most people:
Wofford is well aware that it is the age difference, more than his fiance’s gender that has caused jaws to plop and unleashed a fusillade of social media blasts.
“Everyone has a certain kind of amusement when there’s a big age difference,” he says, seated in a rattan chair in the apartment that the couple, who have been together for 15 years, have shared for the past six. “But that’s a part of the magic of love. It really can bring people across a bridge, or build a bridge that you can cross.”
Wofford’s wife of nearly 50 years died in 1996, and he met spouse-to-be Matthew Charlton on a Fort Lauderdale beach five years later, when Wofford was 75 and Charlton 25. They’ve been together for fifteen years now, so this relationship has stood the test of time.
Wofford refuses to characterize it sexually:
He dismisses the assigning of labels, or “pinning,” as he calls it.
“Did I ever consider myself gay? No. It’s what I think should not be asked of people,” he says. An Old World-style romantic, he discusses the relationship in terms of love rather than sexuality.
“I think this is an example of the most private matter. Most of us are intrigued with the sexuality of friends or others. Perhaps with some close friends you want to talk about this,” he says. “When people want to talk abut their sexuality, either go to confession or be happy about it. I don’t measure myself or my friends by their sexuality.”
I’m with him on that one.
[ADDENDUM: I put this in the comments section, but I thought I’d add it here as well.
The story of Wofford and Charlton reminds me somewhat of Death in Venice, albeit with a far happier ending [emphasis mine]:
Death in Venice is a novella written by the German author Thomas Mann, first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig. The work presents a great writer suffering writer’s block who visits Venice and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a stunningly beautiful youth. Though he never speaks to the boy, much less touches him, the writer finds himself drawn deep into ruinous inward passion; meanwhile, Venice, and finally, the writer himself, succumb to a cholera plague. The novella is powerfully intertextual, with the chief sources being first the connection of erotic love to philosophical wisdom traced in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, and second the Nietzschean contrast between the god of restraint and shaping form, Apollo, and the god of excess and passion, Dionysus.
The boy in the story (Tadzio) is based on a boy (WÅ‚adzio or Tadzio, nicknames for the Polish name WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw or Tadeusz respectively) Mann had seen during a visit to Venice in 1911…
Aschenbach checks into his hotel, where at dinner he sees an aristocratic Polish family at a nearby table. Among them is an adolescent boy of about fourteen years in a sailor suit. Aschenbach, startled, realizes that the boy is supremely beautiful, like a Greek sculpture. His older sisters, by contrast, are so severely dressed that they look like nuns. Later, after spying the boy and his family at a beach, Aschenbach overhears the lad’s name, Tadzio, and conceives what he first interprets as an uplifting, artistic interest…
Over the next days and weeks, Aschenbach’s interest in the beautiful boy develops into an obsession. He watches him constantly and secretly follows him around Venice. One evening, the boy directs a charming smile at him, looking, Aschenbach thinks, like Narcissus smiling at his own reflection. Disconcerted, Aschenbach rushes outside, and in the empty garden whispers aloud, “I love you!”
Aschenbach ends up dying of cholera in Venice. The real “Tadzio” who inspired the character in the book was WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Moes, who did not realize he was the source until many years later.]
Yes and no.
It doesn’t matter to me how he subjectively defines his sexuality. But his public affirmation of love and commitment to a man is at least suggestive of his sexual tastes. I personally was planning to spend the rest of my life not thinking about Harris Wofford’s sexual preference, without ever feeling like I was missing out on an important topic, until his actions raised the subject.
different strokes for different folks. As long as everybody is well past the age of consent. Not sure about those states that have it as low as 14yrs of age.
Weird. Really weird.
And don’t tell me they aren’t having sex. They are. Wofford shouldn’t be so purposefully vague, coy and cute.
For the sake of his kids, grandkids and great grandkids I hope there is a solid pre-nup.
Cornhead:
I don’t know how to say it delicately, so I’ll just say it: at the age of 90, sex might not be involved.
Cornhead:
By the way, it reminds me somewhat of Death in Venice [emphasis mine]:
I’m willing to take Wofford and his partner’s declaration of love at face value and support the POV that it’s nobody’s business but theirs.
Same sex marriage however is something I don’t support because of the societal repercussions.
Wofford in seeking formalized recognition of his ‘marriage’, facilitates and advances the societal repercussions that future generations will regret.
So does this mean he was born gay and didn’t know it or was he seduced into gaiety by the younger man or is this a non-sexual platonic relationship from start to finish? Was that Fort Lauderdale beach a gay beach? Is there a pre-nuptual agreement? What does Matthew do for a living?
Imagine your father marrying a man at the age of 90. What would it do to you?
Quite likely this guy has been cruising for years, way before his wife died.
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On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
Rudyard Kipling
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In the long run we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes
(The grave-digger of the British Empire)
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Future generations are probably going to be standing in long lines waiting for free gov’t cheese or trying not to get beheaded by roving bands of jihadis. Who is married to who is probably going to be the least of their problems. That said, I think SCOTUS should have left it up to the states and I think it’s stupid that a couple would try to force those that object to participate in their ceremonies.
Neo:
When people say it is not about the money it is exactly about the money. When people say it is not about sex, it is about sex. I don’t think Wofford’s age is relevant. He’s above ground. And come to think of it, he’s the same age as the Queen of England. The British press should ask her about her sex life so we can all know.
Rather than “don’t ask don’t tell” I prefer “don’t ask don’t care”. From the love that dare not speak its name to the love that won’t shut up about itself.
Cornhead:
Wofford’s age is relevant, although not determinative.
The incidence of ED goes way up and libido down with advancing age. That says nothing about Wofford himself, but the statistics are not in favor.
I’ll leave it at that.
Neo:
If you think the incidence of ED is an insurmountable obstacle to engaging in the act of whoopee as age advances, you obviously do not watch any televised sports. Those who do are subjected to a wall-to-wall onslaught of commercials for the various prescription drugs that address the condition. (I will say this, those who cast those ads have scoured the nation for the absolute cream of the crop of attractive women age 45-60.)
Scott:
I don’t think I ever said a thing to indicate it’s an insurmountable obstacle. I said the opposite, in fact, that it was “relevant although not determinative.”
That’s it.
As far as Viagra and Cialis go, they deal with the ED problem but not in everyone, and they don’t touch the libido problem.
I keep thinking I’m done with this topic, but sheesh! And yes, those women are very attractive older women–and so are the guys in the ads, too.
So, the bottom line is that “=” was advocacy under the pro-choice doctrine for selective exclusion. Relationships between people begins with heterosexual couples, but it does not end with transgender/homosexual, transgender/crossover, etc. couplets.
I suppose like abortion rites/reactive parenthood and clinical cannibalism/planned parenthood, this progressive establishment of institutional and selective discrimination against individuals and associations that are not politically favored will be sustained without comment and without repercussion.
Degenerate. And ruled by Degenerates.
Private perversion is one thing. It will always be with us in our fallen human state. There is much leeway for the quiet tolerance of same sex couples. The public celebration and promotion of such as form of epitome is evil and degenerate.
Virtually all the problems of the West spring from the crumbling of one if its main pillars: Christianity, and the concomitant collapse in values, morals, and healthy social relationships.
Some of you may be too sophisticated or too edumacated to accept this. Keep thinking happy thoughts then.
I am with KLS, don’t want to know and could care less, but expect me to go beyond tolerance to cheerleading, well, get out of my face.
GB,
I with you on the same sex marriage issue. I have far less trouble with civil unions because that keeps the difference btweeen gays and normal marriage. Marriage has a lot of social norms that accompany it–monogamy, potential child bearing, parenthood, and responsibilities to both partners families. Many gays make no bones about ignoring monogamy. Childbearing is never an issue. Parenthood differs for men and women. Most maried people take some responsibility for aging in-laws. When gays take these things out of the concept of marriage, they redefine the institution, as they try to do when the buy eggs and rent wombs. For a married couple, extramarital sex can mean a child of someone else that one of the partners must be responsible for which affects their offspring.
The attitudes of many of the gay marriage advocates seem to indicate that destroying the social norms relating to marriage is their aim. It sure isn’t about inheritance and hospital visitation rights. These kinds of things doné„t require a total rewrite of all our standards.
KLSmith – You don’t get to government cheese without destroying the family. You don’t get to immigrant invasion without government cheese.
Nick: I think we get to gov’t cheese when we destroy the economy. That won’t be the fault of gays it will be the fault of leftists.
KL, I’m saying that if you want to destroy an economy, at least one with the natural advantages that ours has had, the first thing you would do is turn the poorer people into an “underclass”. You do that by breaking up the family, making it that the male doesn’t have to work and the female doesn’t have to marry. This all started with destroying the family – after that you just watch the bowling pins fall.
We never would have reached this point without the sexual revolution and welfare. The two work hand-in-hand. Gay marriage is just the 70th battlefield of a long war, and the collateral damage of that war is the economy. In fact, immigration law and welfare were passed around the same time, about 50 years ago, and neither of them did immediate damage. It was only as the family fell apart that we saw the economy suffer, and now we have jobs that Americans won’t do at the same time as we have a permanent non-working class.
Nick: yep