Aisle Be Damned

By Gene Weingarten

I think we can all agree with our pres­i­dent that gay mar­riage is a grave threat to Amer­i­ca, because if it weren’t, our pres­i­dent would not have this issue to flog and might lose the elec­tion, and then who would pro­tect us from being mur­dered by poor­ly shaven indi­vid­u­als from Mid­dle East­ern nations?

No, wait. That can’t be right. The rea­son gay mar­riage is a grave threat to Amer­i­ca must be that if we let gay peo­ple mar­ry, the entire hal­lowed insti­tu­tion of mar­riage will be dis­graced. No one will take mar­riage seri­ous­ly any­more. Pret­ty soon the Amer­i­can divorce rate will start approach­ing 50 per­cent, and the sanc­ti­ty of the whole process will be com­pro­mised, with pop stars get­ting drunk, mar­ried, and annulled all on the same week­end. And then, before you know it, peo­ple will take mar­riage so casu­al­ly that romance and pas­sion them­selves will erode, cou­ples will no longer care about how they look to each oth­er, and Amer­i­ca will become a nation of peo­ple wad­dling around with keis­ters the size, tex­ture, and pli­a­bil­i­ty of weath­er balloons.

Oh, wait.

Well, that’s not why, any­way. The argu­ment against legal­iz­ing gay mar­riage must be the same as the argu­ment against legal­iz­ing drugs: If you legal­ize gay mar­riage, every­one will want to do it. Clear­ly, we all have these mas­sive, pent-up, homo­sex­u­al urges wait­ing to erupt, once we get the gid­dyap go-ahead from the gov­ern­ment. George Bush and Dick Cheney might take up res­i­dence togeth­er in a sim­ply dar­ling Crys­tal City duplex. If gays are allowed to get mar­ried, guys like me will start look­ing at our wives and think­ing, wait a minute, I have to set­tle for this weak lit­tle, squeaky-voiced, thong-wear­ing thing when Sylvester Stal­lone is available?

Oh, wait.

Actu­al­ly, I guess the real rea­son to oppose gay mar­riage is that God is opposed to it, as cer­ti­fied by Leviti­cus (Lev. 20:13). Because this is an actu­al book of the Bible, we must obey every­thing it says lit­er­al­ly, which is why Bill Cos­by, Newt Gin­grich, Albert Ein­stein, and Bill Clin­ton have all been duly put to death for adul­tery, the pre­scribed pun­ish­ment (Lev. 20:10). Or why any­one who shaves his head (Lev. 21:5) or wears cloth­ing made from both wool and linen togeth­er (Lev. 19:19) or mar­ries a divorced woman (Lev. 21:7) has been pub­licly con­demned as a sin­ner. Or why any mar­ried cou­ple that has sex when the woman is men­stru­at­ing has been ban­ished from civ­i­lized soci­ety and left
to wan­der the earth (Lev. 20:18).

Well, maybe not.

But per­haps the best argu­ment for why gay mar­riage is a grave threat to Amer­i­ca is his­tor­i­cal. His­tor­i­cal­ly, when a soci­ety begins to con­done deca­dence and licen­tious­ness, it col­laps­es like a souf­fle in an earth­quake. The nations that sur­vive and pros­per and become world pow­ers are the ones that adhere to strict moral codes, like Yemen, Dji­bouti, Myan­mar, and that one with all the goats.

Okay, I con­fess that I don’t real­ly under­stand why any­one gives a fig about this issue, but I am sure our pres­i­dent knows best, by virtue of his supe­ri­or brain and his Doc­tor of Thinkol­o­gy degree. If he says that it requires a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to rec­ti­fy this griev­ous error, then, by gum, I am all for it. I have been look­ing at the Con­sti­tu­tion, actu­al­ly, and I have to admit that an anti-gay-mar­riage amend­ment would fit right in.

You’d hard­ly know it was there. You could even add it to an exist­ing amendment.

For exam­ple, Amend­ment VIII: “Exces­sive bail shall not be required, nor exces­sive fines imposed, nor cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments inflict­ed. Also, ix-nay on the omos-hay, okay?”

But if we do fol­low this path, we real­ly ought to con­sid­er anoth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, draw­ing not only from this same intense desire to improve our soci­ety but from our increas­ing will­ing­ness to invoke the deity to do so:

Pro­posed Amend­ment XXVIII:

“It shall be unlaw­ful to use the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion as a play­thing for the polit­i­cal­ly self-right­eous. Vio­la­tors should all go to Hell.”

Gene Wein­garten’s e‑mail address is [email protected].

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
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