i know that is a very long, and b a preaching to the choir deal but it's very funny. don't feel obliged.

So just shut up and buy Adam and Steve a nice present already
by Jim Washburn

Last week, a Massachusetts court ruled that gay marriage is legal in that
state, providing new fuel for conservatives who are gearing upto make gay
marriage the wedge issue of the presidential election. President Bush has
already hinted that a constitutional amendment, for crissakes,may be
necessary to stave off this gay threat.
Responding to the Massachusetts ruling, Bush released a statement saying,
"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. If activist
judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative
will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to
defend the sanctity of marriage."
Before we all go into knee-jerk paroxysms of knee-slapping hilarity over this
non-issue being hoisted by these moral morons, consider their side for a
minute: Does allowing gays to marry threaten the institution of marriage?
If you really think about it, the answer isan unequivocal yes.
If you're straight and married, you've almost certainly got gay people to
thank for it. Wedding planners, florists, clothiers, hairstylists, caterers,
priests: it's no mere stereotype that these professions abound in gay folk,
and your wedding would have been drab if not impossible without them. Add to that the gay friends and officemates who make such a pleasant and positive
fuss about your nuptials. And TV's Queer Eye spiff-up squad is only a
distillation of what gay people have been doing for ages: making straight
men and women look desirable, or at least survivable, to each other so that
they might hook up.
If gays were busy getting married themselves, do you think they'd have time
to preen the rest of us? We'd all be back in the trailer parkin our
overalls, picking scabs off our unmoisturized faces and wondering why the
phone doesn't ring. It is only because gays can't marry that they get caught
up at all in the romance and filigree of heterosexual marriage,and they'd be
off us like fleas off a wet dog if they could go to weddings that didn't
depend upon our breeder antics. It's not just marriage, but the very survival
of the species that depends upon gays being forcibly kept-by constitutional
amendment, if need be-in their role as our eternal bestmen and bridesmaids.
Now on to the knee-jerk paroxysms: aside from the above, every gay man and
woman in the nation could marry five times over, and it would not affect you
a whit. Why the hell should you care? If Eskimos marry, does your wedding
bed grow cold? If gays marry, does your wife grow a dick ?It does not affect
you! Remember one of the founding tenets that made America great: mind your own goddamn business. That goes double if you're the
government prying in between the sheets.
I've known some gays who are real jerks.
That'sbecause they're like everybody else, except for the making your wife grow a dick thing.
There are gay jerks, gay Samaritans, gay plumbers, gay machinists, gay bums,
gay war heroes and gay Sept. 11 victims. They get to pay the same taxes, do
the same jury duty and die in the same wars (albeit with a sense of service
and secrecy that straights needn't muster) as every other citizen. Why
shouldn't their love and commitment be accorded the same respect and
protections in the land to which they contribute and defend?
But gay marriage would make a mockery of marriage! And that's the job of
heterosexuals, right? Can they possibly screw it up worse than straight
folks? The divorce rate's higher than 50 percent, and couple sare bailing out
of marriages quicker than ever; something like 60 percent of married men and
40 percent of married women have extramarital affairs; and their kids who
aren't busy shooting their classmates are packed with so many pills they
sound like maracas when you shake them.
An 86-year-old sleazeball can marry an 18-year-old dominatrix, and that is
sanctified. Larry King can marry for the seventh time, and it's sanctified.
Britney Spears can get married and annulled quicker than you can say
"publicity whore," and it is sanctified. Yet a gay couple that has stuck it
out through better and worse for 40 years, being exemplary neighbors and
citizens the whole while, pose a threat to marriage? It is legal for them to
marry, of course, just not to each other. They could go out this afternoon
and marry a total stranger, so long as it's someoneof the opposite sex.
That's the law. What's left to mock?
But for all of history, marriage has meant the sacred bond between a man and
a woman! Except for when it meant a man and several women, or a man and a
woman and his deceased brother's wife, or a man and his slave, which wasn't
significantly different from being his wife since women were chattel with no
say in their own lives and certainly no vote. Let's be guided in all things
by historical precedent, shall we? I'll go lock up the slaves and child
laborers while you go get the horse-but don't hook no buggy to it because
that ain't how we done things-and we'll go downtown and shout down those
apostates trying to introduce antibiotics, electricity, pavement, baseball
and all that other newfangled nonsense.
But what about the Bible? Oh, you mean the part where Jesus chased the gays from the temple with a stick? Hold on, I read that wrong: it was the money changers Jesus was after, suggesting that today he'd be whacking heads on Wall Street not Christopher Street. But what about the time he berated the mob of gay people? Oops, sorry, it wasn't gays; it was a mob of judgmental zealots that he told off, remember, when he admonished that only he who was without sin should cast the first stone.
Unlike the fearmongering preachers spewing bile on the airwaves today, Jesus
said a lot about love and acceptance, but he never uttered a single syllable
about homosexuality. Ah, but he did give a blanket affirmation of Old
Testament law, where a man laying with a man is an abomination punishable by
death. But that exists alongside so many other abominations and admonitions
that there aren't enough goats to sacrificeto keep every one of us sinners
from being put to death.
There are bans on premarital sex, adultery, lust, sleeping with a woman during her period,eating three-day-old meat, eating shellfish and, let's not forget, "You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard." Forgot about that one, didn't you? Ha-ha, you're going to Hell. So why not take a tip from Jesus and put your own house in order before you go tearing down your neighbor's?
But what about the children?
What about them? If you're worried about gay parents molesting their
children, bear in mind that most molestations, even same-sex ones, are done
by heterosexual adults. And when parents go bonkers and set their kids on
fire or starve them in basements, it's usually because "God" told them to,
not Mr. Blackwell. Sure there are gay monsters, but probably inno greater
percentage than there are among straight families. And stable gay couples
could adopt some of the unwanted children born to the unfit parents of more
sanctified marriages.
But won't having gay parents cause childrento turn gay? Sure, just look at
the gay offspring of Dick Cheney, Sonny Bono and Phyllis Schlafly. Gay. Gay.
Gay.
But what would gay marriage do to American values?
You may have a point there. Look at Canada, where gay marriage has turned
them into such a nation of faggots that they couldn't even see the clear and
imminent danger posed by Iraq. They've gone soft loading up on universal
medical care and cheap prescription drugs, while we're left holding the line
against Saddam and sodomites alike.
Repeat after me, with gusto this time:
"Gays getting married does not affect me."
Please keep that in mind in the months ahead because the American Taliban
ensconced in the White House will be doing all they can to bang the anti-gay
drum, to distract from issues that do affect you, like: your job going
bye-bye overseas; your decline in real wages; the health-insurance crisis;
the deficit that will hobble your children's future; the children left
behind by No Child Left Behind; the willful dismantling of environmental
protections; the subjugation of our energy policy to corporate interests;
the unbridled corruption of White House cronies like Enron and Halliburton;
the runaway military budget; the abrogation of our civil rights; the lies
told to us to fabricate an unnecessary war costing hundreds of American
lives and billions of dollars, with no end in sight.

You know, issues like those, the kind grown-ups talk about while the kids
and feebleminded are out obsessing over their neighbors' wee-wees.