The most heartening thing about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani giving the oath of office to his successor Michael Bloomberg in Times Square on New Year’s Eve was that two middle-aged divorced men appeared on national television with handsome women to whom they were not legally married. If any pundits commented critically on this fact, I didn’t hear them. Such .easy acceptance of public figures’ sex after divorce wouldn’t have been possible two decades ago, perhaps one. Recalling Paul Goodman’s objections to nonsacramental marriage – that the state shouldn’t be in the business of licensing sex – I wanted to add: especially for people who weren’t virgins.
