I don’t watch much TV, but last night was one of those nights when I just felt like curling up on the couch with a blanket and letting things wash over me. So for two or three hours I kept flipping back and forth between one of Woody Allen’s best films, “Annie Hall,” on Turner Classic Movies, and a “Boy Meets Boy” marathon on Bravo. Bravo was running the final three episodes consecutively. It was a wonderful evening.

I’m generally opposed on principle to watching so-called reality TV. But despite all the filler, despite the artifice of people pretending they’re having private conversations when there’s obviously a camera crew in the room, and despite the too-long commercial breaks, I totally got sucked into “Boy Meets Boy.” I have some random thoughts on it.

First, of the three finalists, I’m so glad James picked Wes. What a total cutie, and he was so obviously not the straight guy. (One of the three finalists was straight, but we and James didn’t know which one until the end.) My gaydar told me that Franklin was straight. Brian would have been too easy. As for Wes, he just seemed genuinely gay.

Second, what the hell was up with James’s best friend Andra? What a nutball. Girl needs to relax. It’s only a TV show. It’s not like these are the only 15 men in the world for James to choose from. It’s not like James must marry one of these men (even if he legally could). Anyway, if I were one of the contestants, and James and Andra were a package deal, I’d find myself a different boyfriend. The last thing a guy needs is a boyfriend with an overprotective fag hag. Her drama was even spreading to James himself. “If I picked the straight one, I think my world would come crashing down.” No, you’d lose the game and then you’d go back to L.A. and have thousands of gorgeous intelligent men climbing all over each other to date you. Relax.

Third, this Southern California body fascism is so annoying. I mean yeah, many of them are gorgeous. But kind of plastic. And of course hairless. And what the hell, do they work on farms all day long? They just naturally have these amazingly sculpted bodies? That’s my biggest problem with reality TV shows — all the unrealistically, boringly plastic California porn-esque men.

I’d take Wes, though.

As for “Annie Hall” — so many memorable quotes.

Love is too weak a word for what I feel — I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I — I do, don’t you think I do?

Woody Allen wit and California plastic. That pretty much covers the gamut of men, doesn’t it?

Jeffrey Rosen writes in today’s New York Times Magazine that Lawrence v. Texas has emboldened social conservatives, and that this is not surprising. Indeed, when advocates for social change rely on the courts to effect change, they run the risk of a backlash. I sure wouldn’t want to be a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts right now, having to decide that state’s gay marriage case. Whatever the outcome of that case, lots of people are sure to get angry, and a pro-gay-marriage decision might hurt the cause in the rest of the nation by emboldening those who support an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution. I think this is why, a month and a half past the court’s self-imposed deadline, it still has not issued a decision.

One of my old law professors agrees with the theory that courts are not the best vehicle for social change. He says that Brown v. Board of Education, for example, emboldened social conservatives; 10 years after the decision, a vast majority of Southern schools remained segregated. It wasn’t until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that society became more racially integrated, and that was only because of revulsion against the tactics of Southern racists, epitomized by Bull Connor; and the ratcheting up of violent racist actions in the South, my professor contends, was a backlash against events such as Brown. So in a way, the Civil Rights Act was a backlash against a backlash.

Maybe social change is just backlash versus backlash — in which case, no social revolution is ever complete. Human beings are notoriously fickle and easily frightened. The clock can always turn back again.

I’ve been meaning to link to this for a while — it’s an unfinished blog entry that Abstract Nixon wrote about me last month, and I hope it’s OK for me to link it even if it’s not an “official” polished blog entry.

I just think there’s something sweet about it.