For anyone who thinks gay people should be "reformed."

(Reposting this in solidarity with the gay couples in Utah who have just had their right to marry violated by the government.)

Imagine a world where almost everyone is gay. It’s fully accepted that women ought to fall in love and marry other women, and men should marry other men. Every movie and TV show depicts gay couples and families. In the park, everywhere you look, there are gay couples strolling hand in hand, lying on a blanket looking at the clouds, or just laughing together, having a good time. No one bothers them, because in this world, everyone assumes that everyone else is gay.

Since being gay is ‘normal,’ gay people have all the power in this society. Every school board member, state legislator, and congress-person is gay. Even the President of the United States is gay. In fact, there has never been an openly straight president in our entire nation’s history.

Now imagine that you’re one of few straight people in this world, and you've finally met the squeeze of your dreams. If you’re a girl, you’ve found that super cute guy with blue eyes and dimples. If you’re a guy, you’ve found that gorgeous girl with the shiny hair you’ve been looking for all your life. For the first time, you’ve met a person who feels right, who makes you happy and excited and peaceful all at once. There’s a problem, though. When you walk down the street together, you get dirty looks from passing gay couples who think that you’re disgusting. You can’t even hold hands when you go to the movies because roaming bands of gay guys might come and beat you up. You have to somehow tell your moms that you’re straight, and when you do, they cry, and maybe even kick you out of the house. In fact, now that everyone knows you’re straight, they act weird around you, embarrassed. Many of them stop being your friend.

After a year or two of this treatment, maybe you decide that being with your perfect squeeze isn’t worth all this grief and rejection. You decide that being straight is only in your head, and that if you try really hard, you can make yourself be attracted to same-sex people. So you give up your perfect squeeze, and you try to “pass” for gay. If you’re a guy, you find a decent looking dude, and you pretend you can’t get enough of touching him. If you’re a girl, you find a nice chick with good skin and you make out in the hallways at school. Because that’s what everyone wants you to do.

Could you do it? Could you make yourself be attracted to someone in order to satisfy a social order you don’t fit into? Could you suddenly decide that you’ve had enough of being straight, that you’re gay now, and you’re going to be happy with that? 

 When I met my husband, I thought he was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I loved the way he rubbed my back after making me laugh. I loved kissing him, and holding his hand, and snuggling with him. I didn’t have to force it. I wanted to do all these things because, on a very basic, biological, even cellular level, I was attracted to him. I didn’t decide to be attracted. I wasn’t attracted to him because I thought other people would approve. The attraction came first, before everything else, and I had absolutely no power over it.

            Ask anybody about their squeeze, they’d be likely to tell you the same thing. There was just something about her. I felt drawn to him immediately. There’s no reason they’re attracted to the people they want. They just are. Instinctive, biological attraction is a universal human experience. We want who we want. We can’t help it.

            If attraction is powerful and ungovernable, then Love is a force of nature akin to a hurricane. Love cannot be contained. When two people recognize their soul mate in each other, the world lights up around them. Colors are bolder and the air is cleaner. The future is suddenly not so scary, because they have each other, and they know they always will. They’re so sure of this, in fact, that they want to stand up in front of everyone they know and declare that from this day forward, they will be unquestioningly devoted to each other. For the rest of their lives, they will act as one, because from now on, they are part of a family.

            Because that’s what marriage is. Marriage is two people deciding to make a new family, even if it’s just a family of two.

            I would never, ever want to deprive anyone of that experience. I could never say to another human being: “I can know the joy of declaring my love for my soul mate and committing myself to him forever, but you never can.” Who could dream of taking that away from another human being?

Anyone who thinks that heterosexuality can be "chosen" is either lacking in basic human empathy, or is a self-loathing closeted homosexual themselves. Either way, it's no way to be.

Don't like same sex marriage? Marry the opposite sex, mind your own business, and let other people choose their own lovers. Okay? It's time to grow up already, America.

See this article about a recent ruling on Oklahoma:http://bit.do/gvjo

Quote from ruling judge:

“Exclusion of just one class of citizens from receiving a marriage license based upon the perceived ‘threat’ they pose to the marital institution is, at bottom, an arbitrary exclusion based upon the majority’s disapproval of the defined class. It is also insulting to same-sex couples, who are human beings capable of forming loving, committed, enduring relationships.”

Jane and Henry

            Jane Austen and I enjoy an occasional acquaintance. I open one of her novels, catch a whiff of printer’s ink and rose water, and suddenly she is with me. She waits patiently until I close her book before she asks her questions.

            “It certainly is warm here, yet I see no hearth!”

            I point to the radiator. “The fire that warms this contrivance is in the root cellar.”

            “How clever, though a fire can be very merry. Where are we going?”

            “To the kitchen,” I say. “I've left the dishes rather too long.”

            “What?” she says as I scrape the egg yolk off my breakfast plate. “Are you doing that yourself?”

            “Here in the colonies, the few servants available work only for the very rich.”

            “How vexing!” She watches, captivated as I turn off the water. “Water comes right from the walls, does it?”

            I improvise: “The wall makes it. Now look at this, Jane.”  I go to my desk and turn on my computer.

            “What a wonderful little lamp!” she exclaims politely, though I can see she is appalled by its ugliness. “Where does the oil go?”

            “Actually, Jane, this is more like pen and paper than it is like a lamp.” I point to the keyboard.

            “Letters!” She says. “But it must take so very long to search out the correct -- Oh!” She cries, for I have begun to type, and my speed is positively dizzying.

            She reads over my shoulder, delighted with what she sees. “What beautiful sentiments! What lovely language!”

            “Thank you,” I say.

            She reads my work aloud: “We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union… You must be very studied in matters of state!” With a sideways glance at my person, she ventures, “Perhaps this occupation, which belonged only to the men of my day, is the reason you go about in trousers?”

            “My attire is not entirely unrelated to democratic government,” I say to cover the fact that my furious typing has stopped. I am finished with the Preamble, and now I am at a loss. The Preamble is all I know. My eye alights on a slip of paper, and I wince with immediate regret. A schedule I'd written for myself the night before lies in full view on my desktop.

Before I can hide it, Jane says, “I fear I am keeping you from your work.”

            “Not at all, don't give it a thought!”

            “But here it says that you were to begin revisions on your novel at eight AM, and I've selfishly kept you occupied with my own writing these many hours. Do not let me prevent you! I am quite content to amuse myself with a novel from your library until teatime.”

            “It is nearly teatime, now,” I say, wondering if I have any cookies left in the cupboard. I begin to rise from my desk when I hear a throat primly cleared.

            “Oh, I haven't any appetite, and you must be eager to begin your work.”

            “Naturally,” I say, sitting down again. “You are too good.”

            She walks to my bookshelf and peruses the selection. When her back is turned, I feverishly type the Preamble to the Constitution a few more times. I have to stop, though, when she stations herself on the divan in perfect position to view my computer screen.

She opens The Tropic of Capricorn.

            I open the file containing my novel. I look at the first sentence. There are no truths universally acknowledged, and no one is uniting the best blessings of existence. Morality is so absent from the page that not even morality’s absence is a commentary on anything.

            “Do you call this writing?” I hear Jane mutter to herself. “This is obscene.”

            I give her such a look that my true sentiments are fully, visibly expressed.

            “Oh, dear!” She cries upon seeing my countenance. “I am sure your writing is everything this is not!” She holds up Henry Miller. “I am only on page one and already confronted with such grotesque offenses!”

            Suddenly the overwhelming odor of printer’s ink and human effluence pervades my apartment. With dread I realize the smell is coming from my bedroom. He is doubtless reclined on my clean sheets, utterly naked. I can only hope he has bathed recently. “Obscenity is a concept employed by the cowardly,” he mutters, his voice resonating through the wood of the bedroom door. I am momentarily relieved that he’s said no more, until he adds, “you prudish, frigid husk.”

            “Who is here!?” Jane whispers, alarmed.

            I move in front of the bedroom door. “It was the man delivering more water.”

            “I thought the water was made in the wall!” She says, agitated.

            “Someone has to put in the ingredients, doesn't he?”

            “I suppose,” she says suspiciously, but delicacy prevents her from pursuing the subject further. “Perhaps a walk would be in order,” she mumbles.

            “Yes, Jane, you are looking pale,” I say by way of excusing my readiness to usher her out.

            She gathers her shawl about her shoulders, ties a bonnet under her chin, and walks through my front door, muttering, "Boar." Or maybe it was "bore."

            “Overrated priggish little noodle,” I hear growled from my bedroom.

            “Yeah, well I only read you for graduate credit,” I remind him.

            “Oh? And who reads you?”

            It is best to ignore him. And I should work on my first sentence, I remind myself. I should make it perfect.

            Maybe not perfect. Maybe just good.

            But what is good?

            The question is terrifying enough to warrant a good gorging. I get the cookies from the cabinet, pick up the Tropic of Capricorn, and head for the bedroom.

            “My god you’ve gotten fat.” He leers.

            “Move over.” I kick at a hairy leg.

Nation’s fat lazy husbands wish their wives looked more like Angelina Jolie

A recent Pew Study has found that up to 60% of American fat lazy husbands wish their wives looked like Angelina Jolie. The other 40% of those surveyed mentioned such unattainable actresses as Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansen, and Jessica Alba.

When asked to comment on their choices, one respondent said, “It’s just you can really tell Angelina works hard at her appearance, you know? She’s always got her hair fixed nice, and her makeup looks good. And I think she’s got really nice taste in evening gowns. My wife…” Respondent pauses to think while scratching a fungus growing in the folds of skin between his fat rolls, “I mean I’m lucky if she puts on a tube top, you know?” Other respondents echoed similar concerns while picking at hairy moles, pulling underwear out of their butt cracks, or pausing to swallow a large mouthful of under-chewed meatball sandwich.

Respondents’ wives were too busy cleaning their houses, earning a living, mothering their children, and working out at the gym to comment.

(If I wrote for The Onion)

((And for the record, my husband is neither fat nor lazy. He's actually very cute.))