By the end of the month, over 3,000 same-sex couples will have received marriage licenses from the city of the San Francisco. The scene at City Hall has been one of happiness and joy. Couples embrace, onlookers applause, and history is made.
And it horrifies me.
I can’t tell you the gut-wrenching nausea I’ve felt as one marriage license after another is issued to beaming couples. I can’t tell you how much it offends my moral beliefs. It’s a kind of physical pain. It sickens me. I want to turn back time and erase the entire offensive tableau from reality as we know it.
Listen: the last thing this world needs is more marriage.
Long-term gay couples are great to hang around with, because as committed as they are to one another, they haven’t quite adopted the characteristics of married people. But with these licenses, it’s bound to happen.
And let me tell you, married people aren’t pretty:
And don’t get me started on their “life events.” Do you realize that I have 15 separate tax-deferred retirement accounts? One is for myself, and the rest are for all the couples I know. It’s the only way I can afford to buy gifts for their weddings, baptisms, housewarmings, and children’s parties. I have them all named: “Ron&Sue401k,” “Tom&JaneIRA,” etc. And now I’ll have to start up a dozen more: “Adam&Steve,” “Lisa&Lisa,” etc.
I’m not just an armchair activist, either. Whenever one of my friends has gotten married, I’ve paraded up and down in front of the ceremony, waving a sign and wearing a sandwich board that says “FREE MY PEOPLE.” Now, of course, I don’t get carried away if I’m actually a member of the wedding party. I mean, I still wave the signs--but I don’t spraypaint the message on the all wedding and guest cars. I take my responsibilities seriously.
Sure, a part of me feels good to see all those same-sex couples having fun, getting a piece of the married action, flaunting it in the face of those who would try to legislate their personal lives and deny them equal rights under the law.
I’m just saying that they’re added to the long list of people who aren’t allowed over to my place for Poker Night.
Posted by Greg at 03:20 AM. Filed under:
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I think we single people should start sending out those form letters to the families, and we can detail exactly how many times we ate our ravioli in our boxers or had to buy another gift for Bob and Steve.
p.s. Are your friends Lisa and Lisa related to Cult Jam?
I don’t know what kind of married people you know, but I eat standing up at a kitchen island littered with action figures, shards of broken glass and sticky dried wine stains. When I share dinner with the wife, we’re usually joined by Lenny Brisco and whoever he’s working with that night. And My Gay Friends (now that’s a reality show with potential) shop endlessly at gourmet markets for the perfect cavatelli to accompany the clam sauce, clog the grocery aisles with enormous boquets of flowers and balloons, and endlessly adopt adorable children who run rampant in our streets and parks. I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a well-furnished and well-provisioned gay household. This is why they never aired the pilot of “Tired Married Couples Redecorate Gay Man’s Life,” opting instead for the Queer Eye angle.
Sorry to rant. I’m just bitter that I never registered for squat when I got married 14 years ago. Anyone got a spare gravy boat?
It’s nice to see someone giving poor old Adam and Steve a little credit. They’re getting torn apart here in Boston.
Dan - alas, I have no gravy boat for you, as we registered for an engine for our car. And Comedy Central actually is airing “Straight Plan for the Gay Man.”
If you give tax deferred retirement accounts as gifts, I’ve changed my mind about never wanting to marry....the gift alone would be worth it!
Hey, I’m married and I eat ravioli in my boxers too. (Well, someone’s boxers.) And I don’t even own a dining room table. So there.
Oh, and Dan, I have three gravy boats. I’ll send you the one shaped like Yoda’s head.
just put your gravy in a coffee mug like the rest of us! why treat the gravy so special as to give it a luxury cruise to the dinner table?
You’re seriously making me reconsider this whole marrying John thing I’ve got going on right now.
I want to be invited to your poker night!
Damn, I had thought that ‘gay’ was my easy out . Now I need an entirely new excuse to pass on the marriage con.
All it took me was one exhausting 6-year marriage to reach your wise conclusion.
BTW, I developed a plan which you may want to follow. I call it Refuse, Resist & Resent. The 3 R’s!
Never again will you see Dirty eating at the Yacht Club while phony soot-covered Dickensicles feign hunger and gratitude as they carol. I was jumping out of my skin. REFUSE!
Never again will I have to engage in an earnest discussion with an in-law about whether the spousinator is ‘suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder’ or just a huge bitch on fire. RESIST!
Never again will I see any tree on any property of mine actually dug up and moved to another location - only to die a couple of short months later. RESENT!
Run, homosexuals, run! Marriage is for nobody. The mayor must be stopped!
One side benefit is that I got to see a car in the parking lot at work with a “Just Married” painted on the rear window, and “Groom” with an arrow pointing to both the driver and passenger. Now that I’ve seen all these gay marriages, I may get to see the other thing I never expect to see in my lifetime - a California Democrat who understands that people pay those taxes they impose.
wait, people pay those?
greg, are divorced catholic converts with issues included in poker night? will you be serving ravioli? is it strip poker? and, um, do your boxers match that coat you posted the picture of? when’s the next poker night?
it’s true.
married people suck.
about every three years i have to find a whole new circle of friends as a result.
this could also be due to the fact that i’m a raging asshole, but i prefer to blame marriage.
If it’s strip poker, ravioli isn’t a good idea. Unless it’s really, really cold leftovers.
finally, some man can know the hell of pre-wedding dieting, making sure your Buddist friend Anjelicka gets the vegetarian, nay vegan, plate and how, exactly, to try to keep the “sauce” away from pervy Uncle Red, all while wearing a dress the price of a used Volvo.
equality at last.
I may never look at ravioli the same way again…
My husband and I never intended to get married—we enjoyed the living-in-sin path instead. Then we needed some quick cash, so off to the LA county magistrate, and voila! Checks from our families arrived and bills were paid! We spent about $500 on wedding and honeymoon and inconvenienced no one. We live exactly the same way we did before we were married. But we both cringe every time one of our married friends announce a pregnancy. They’re dropping like flies.
Just want to add my name to the list of married people who act like juvenile pigs. If anything, I think gay married couples will actually raise the average level of quality among the married population, who are all either juvenile pigs, or the opposite of juvenile pigs, which is worse.
I think we single people should start sending out those form letters to the families, and we can detail exactly how many times we ate our ravioli in our boxers or had to buy another gift for Bob and Steve.
p.s. Are your friends Lisa and Lisa related to Cult Jam?
finally, some man can know the hell of pre-wedding dieting, making sure your Buddist friend Anjelicka gets the vegetarian, nay vegan, plate and how, exactly, to try to keep the “sauce” away from pervy Uncle Red, all while wearing a dress the price of a used Volvo.
equality at last.
wait, people pay those?
greg, are divorced catholic converts with issues included in poker night? will you be serving ravioli? is it strip poker? and, um, do your boxers match that coat you posted the picture of? when’s the next poker night?
I guess that married people are just like us ,there is no difference before or after marriage