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Thursday, February 26, 2004

Thousands of heterosexual couples descend on Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, February 26, 2004-- In an apparent response to the swell of gay marriages in San Francisco in the past two weeks, hundreds of married opposite-sex couples lined the streets of Indianapolis today in search of “civil disunion” and “common-law divorce.”

“I’ve had enough,” said Margaret Gallagher of West Lafayette.  “My husband had been fooling around for the past few years-- and he put the moves on the babysitter last Saturday.  But I can live with that.  What I can’t live with is the idea that gay couples are getting ‘married’ two thousand miles away from me.  Once I heard that, I lost all faith in the institution of marriage.”

Gallagher’s sentiments were echoed by community activist Gary Bower, who remarked that he’d long wanted to run his hands along “the strong, supple, naked thighs” of another man but had been restrained by his marriage vows.  “For twenty-five years,” he said, “I’ve expressed my sexuality in the forms approved by the state.  Basically, I closed my eyes and thought of America.  But now, if the state is going to recognize same-sex relationships as the legal equivalents of marriage, well, hell-- it’s the sailor’s life for me!”

The fallout from gay marriage appears to extend even beyond currently-married men and women seeking divorce.  Renowned men’s-rights advocate Lionel Train, for instance, has announced that divorced men with children need no longer pay child support.  “If a bunch of fruits on the Left Coast can get themselves hitched,” Train said recently, “why should fathers cough up good money to ex-wives and their kids?  Listen, if marriage goes down the tubes, alimony and child support go with it.”

Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America agreed.  “It’s just like queer theorist Michael Warner wrote in his book The Trouble with Normal,” Rios said at a press conference.  “Marriage is built on a structure of exclusion, requiring the abjection of unmarried and gay/lesbian people.  The bundle of legal and social privileges accruing to marriage is significant only if other people can’t have them.  And if you shake that foundation, the whole ideological apparatus comes tumbling down.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

(Inspired, of course, by the matchless Tom Tomorrow).

Posted by Michael on 02/26 at 04:32 AM
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