Ohio Puts Positive Spin on Marriage Discrimination

ister, Ohio passed an official ban on gay marriage Friday, making it one of the most swinging states for gay bachelors, but a real bummer for those seeking to settle down. More importantly, however, was the way Ohio Republicans backing the hate-filled measure put a really positive spin on the whole thing, calling it a positive reinforcement of marriage for children and families. Children and families, of course, still not allowed to marry each other.

Gov. Taft, not related at all to former fat president Taft, but certainly could stand to lose a few, signed the bill known among the ignorant as a "defense of marriage" act, following the lead of 37 other states to pass such acts. Ohio's is the nation's most stringent, stressing the refusal to recognize such marriages publicly and even denying unmarried partners of state employees, in heterosexual or homosexual relationships, the right to marital benefits.

Original provisions of the law were scaled back, including requiring anyone involved in a marriage had to love their partner, guaranteed fidelity and honesty between them, and punished with strong fines anyone entering into marriage under "dishonorable" pretenses, including premarital pregnancy, a drunken nuptial, or just doing it for a laugh. Lawmakers quickly recognized 98% of marriages in the state would become illegal and then simplified the measures of the bill.

Rev. Rutherford Haymaker supported the act in its initial stages, and like his colleagues, fears for the state of marriage without such laws in place.

"It's high time Ohio stepped up to the plate to define marriage for everybody out there," claimed a happy Haymaker, drinking a fifth of bourbon with this reporter in a bar of confused sexual origins. "Let's face it—marriage is about to fall apart in this country. Both the husband and wife get to work now, the children are all running 'round unsupervised, and they watch M-TV shows where men kiss other men and their sexuality gets all confused. I got statistics that say over half of the marriages today, the partners actually agreed to marry each other. That's crazy. If marriage isn't prearranged and conducted with improving family relations and passing down property to offspring, what the hell is it for? This is what happens when you kill all your kings and queens, all sorts of confusion erupts. They had a revolution in Russia and now I hear a man can marry a goat over there. It's blasphemous."

Other opponents of gay marriages were slightly more informed, like Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Stuckus.

"It's my sincere hope when the gays realize they can't get married, they'll see how futile it is to be gay and go back to being straight, like we're all supposed to be," Stuckus said. "We've all fantasized about being gay, and having intimate relations with someone else of the same sex in a Shoney's men's room. But eventually we all grow up and stop masturbating to weightlifting magazines and realize it's time to settle down, and we'll never have a viable political career if we head off to join some dance troupe with a guy named Trent."

Misty-eyed, Stuckus peered out the window and added, "Sweet, sweet Trent."

The Ohio bill passed in close quarters to a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling allowing the constitutionality of gay marriage in that state. Some critics say the ruling is further proof New England has gone "all queer" lately, while others say it was just a drunken night of Supreme Court ruling following the Pats victory last Superbowl Sunday.

aced with tough questions about the economy and pre-war intelligence failures this week, President Bush interrupted a press conference Thursday with an unusual display of astronomical panic.

“Look! Up in the sky!� shouted Bush, pointing upward in mock terror. “We’re all going to die!�

According to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, the airborne terror President Bush cringed beneath before darting out of the room was the “Evil Eye� galaxy, a distant cluster of stars recently photographed by the Hubble space telescope, which according to Bush staffers will soon spell our mortal demise.

“The President cannot stress enough the importance of putting aside divisive squabbling involving lost jobs or unnecessary invasions,� explained McClellan. “Our very lives may be in his hands this day, and it’s time for the American people to band together with the president, now and through this coming November to repel this terrible threat to the American way of life.�

All available scientists and high-school educated adults have dismissed the president’s claims that the Messier 64 galaxy, known as the “Evil Eye� for an unusual appearance caused by stars and interstellar gas rotating in opposite directions, will within the next ten months attempt to suck the United States of America off the globe like a small child sucking the sticker off an orange. While no scientific evidence exists to suggest this is even the remotest of possibilities, President Bush remains steadfast in his message.

“Holy shit, run for your lives!� Bush screamed before ducking out of the room during a press conference on Saturday, shortly after being asked to reconcile conflicting statements he’d made about rolling back last year’s tax cuts.

Political pundits have observed that Bush’s obsession with the M64 galaxy began shortly after the results of a recent AP poll were released, showing the president had taken a sharp nosedive in public opinion after a month of Democratic presidential candidates pointing out his ample flaws. For the first time during Bush’s term, polls showed more Americans likely to vote against the president than for him, and similar polls showed Bush losing to Democratic presidential hopeful and dead man walking John Kerry in head-to-head voting. Bush staffers refute these claims, however, pointing out that Poles are unreliable and often the butt of stereotypical humor.

Other results of the AP polls show Bush’s numbers across the board as down sharply from one month ago, signaling that the president’s attempts to distract voters with fantastical tales of moon bases and Mars adventures were largely unsuccessful and kind of silly.

“Obviously putting a man on Mars didn’t turn people’s cranks as much as the president had hoped,� commented political strategist Vaughn Casey. “So Bush has wisely returned to his ‘Greatest Hits’ playbook in an effort to parlay national paranoia into a second term. It’s a longshot, sure, but if the president could convince average Americans that Al Qaeda actually posed a serious threat in their everyday lives, then I suppose some kind of sucking space monster isn’t really a giant leap of faith from there.�

Further requests to question the president as to the scientific basis of his fears were turned down on the grounds that Messier 64 might be listening.

I'm doing the audition circuit out in Hollywood big time these days, so it wouldn't surprise me to come home and find the apartment a little dusty. Mom always found cleaning to be in defiance of her religion, and dad thinks dusting demeans his manliness. I would say it's the high-pitched girl voice and purple vinyl jacket, but I don't want to get his ire up. Anyway, the dust is no surprise. And in fact, I'm not really surprised to find a gang war between my dad and lesbians either.

I knew some fallout was coming from my sister's revelation she's a homosexual, and dad's gang was getting dangerously full of itself, so it makes sense the two would eventually crash into each other. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Cassandra and her girlfriend Steve tried to make a new family connection, part of some therapy or something, Cassandra's attempt to heal all the emotional scars in her life that led her into Harvard law and becoming a lawyer, instead of the path I took of pre-teen superstardom and my brother Poot's path of cult worship. She was doing well, too, she at least got to the point where mom was cool with it. Of course, mom said she always liked lesbians, she just didn't know why they all followed each other off a cliff to their deaths. Once again, mom not exactly Harvard material, as Cassandra always says.

If only dad could be so understanding. I suppose I could cut him a little slack by saying he was still struggling to keep control of his gang, the Baiters. Uncle Luke suggested the name because they attract so much jailbait, supposedly. I totally agree with them, as I was telling dad. I think they're the masters of attracting younger girls. Hopefully they'll take my suggestion and start calling themselves the Master Baiters.

But my own enjoyment aside, nothing challenges dad's masculinity more than fully-clothed lesbians. He and Cassandra never got along while we were growing up, he never did stop calling her "the other one." And Cassandra's partner Steve keeps telling her to stand up for herself, which makes for more tension than you could shake a tense stick at. Dad was just trying to taunt them after a while, his way of looking cool in front of the gang. I know he had to have some clue "the rugmunchers" wasn't a politically-correct way to refer to them. Cassandra told me so over Christmas and he must have heard. Anyway, it wasn't long before things blew up and Steve's friends in the National Wymans Collective began to protest.

Should be no surprise dad saw the group of leathernecks out front and took them as a threat to his turf. It was good for dad, in a way, since he rallied the gang together behind him. Uncle Luke put aside his differences and the fight for control of the gang was over, at least temporarily. They challenged the Wymans Collective to a rumble, and who knew, Steve can't turn down a challenge.

Actually, the rumble hasn't happened just yet, it's set for later Friday night this week, after Steve's lecture at NYU about the phallogenic oppression of the menstrual cycle, and dad sews the names on the back of the jackets. But this is a by-the-numbers thing for dad, so I predict the fight was short, the Wymans Collective fought the good fight and overcame, and probably three of the four members of dad's Master Baiters survived. Dad's crafty enough and knows when to abandon a good fight, so I assume he climbed on Freddy Mercury's back and got the hell out of there when the odds turned against him. If Uncle Luke bought the farm, maybe that will put the gang disputes to an end, and maybe even dad learned a little bit of respect for Cassandra and her new pals. In the meantime, I got to find a place in California and erase all excuse for coming back to this apartment.

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