Dammit, Uncle Sam, defend my marriage

The Homos are coming! The Homos are coming!

If you’re a resident of the state of holy wedlock, it’s time to bunker in and hunker down. Your marriage is under imminent threat.

It seems Congress passed something called the Defense of Marriage Act back in 1996. What marriage apparently needed to be “defended” against, according to this legislative nugget, was what the Honorable Antonin Scalia refers to in court writings – in his strictly constitutional, non-ideological, non-activist role, of course – as the “homosexual agenda.”

Well, damn.

This is truly distressing. We were going to be celebrating our 30^th wedding anniversary next year. Now, thanks to some uppity gays who want legal recognition and benefits for their relationships, and some bleeding-heart Chardonnay-swilling judge who says the feds overstepped the rightful borders of federalism, it’s all flushed right down the loo.

Maybe you’re one of those naïve types who thought the biggest threats to marriage were things like abuse, serial infidelity and adultery, epidemic divorce – boring, familiar stuff like that.

Boy, are you stupid.

Some of the reaction to the whole gay marriage thing is interesting, to put it mildly. A common theme is the Slippery Slope argument – allow gays to marry, and next we’ll be legalizing polygamy, or letting people marry sheep, mannequins, etc.

None of which, quite frankly, would have the slightest effect on my life -- or my marriage. (Remember, the homos have already destroyed that.)

About that polygamy argument, an especially popular one with the Traditional Values folks: Ummm … maybe it’s tacky of me to bring this up, but have you had an Old Testament refresher lately? Apparently the “one man and one woman” thing wasn’t exactly binding on some earlier generations of holies.

(Abraham, before he was the father of three major world religions, was the father of a son by his wife’s maid. This does not seem to have diminished his divinity among Christians, Jews or Muslims – maybe the only thing those feuding branches of the same theological family tree agree on.)

So my wife and I are going to quietly cling to the sunset days of our life together, and wait in fatalistic resignation for the hordes of pillaging leather queens and diesel dykes to rampage through what once was our marriage.

It was nice while it lasted.

Brood of Grinches

I’ve always loved Christmas and always will.

Not wanting to contribute to what in recent years has become a rising tide of rancor over a holiday that is supposed to herald exactly the opposite, I held off on this one until after the New Year. But before we get too far past the moment…

As I was driving to work a few days before Christmas, I spotted this sticker on a back windshield:

MERRY CHRISTMAS
Extinction threatened

Oh, please.

For another year, we’ve found ourselves in the awesome presence of the relentlessly righteous (just ask them), fierce and fearless defenders of something that doesn’t need defending.

Except, perhaps, from the likes of them. If anything threatens to kill Christmas, it’s these damn people.

This tiresome and obnoxious surge of Christmas fascism (in a rational world, that would be an oxymoron) is becoming something of a holiday tradition, and it’s one I’d personally like to see go the way of cigarette commercials and “The Little Drummer Boy.”

(Yes, I know “The Little Drummer Boy” is still around. But this is, after all, a season of hope.)

We’re now subjected yearly to a horde of humorless, clueless, forbearance-challenged Bible-clutchers who spend every December policing the culture to make sure the season conforms to their creed, and denouncing as a “War on Christmas” anything and everything that doesn’t -- including harmlessly cheerful secular salutations that have been around for years.

Did you feel spiritually renewed by every dutiful “Merry Christmas” on the lips of store clerks? Or did you suspect some not-so-subtle bullying of, and by, the lords of commerce?

Surely that’s just what Jesus had in mind.

The scowling sanctimony of the spiritually superior has always been with us, and always will be. John the Baptist called them a “brood of vipers,” those folks whose self-serving public piety is for the eyes and ears of other human beings.

Now they’ve taken to getting especially venomous in the holiday season, and accusing other people of stealing Christmas.

Nobody stole ours. If theirs is missing, the evidence points to an inside job.