Knee Jerk

"Roger, do you take Dave to be your lawfully wedded husband..."

It's hard to believe that those words could incite such fear and hatred. That there are those who see gay marriage as the onset of the Apocalypse. In my own little world, dissolving Prop 8 actually seems the natural course of things, however the same ruling has caused others to mutilate.

At the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, to which I have never been (something else to add to the bucket list) a sculpture of two grooms atop a wedding cake was vandalized. It was part of a group show called, "Some Assembly Required: Race, Gender and Globalization." The piece was created by artist Susan Tibbles, which is just a fun name to say, for a 2008 op-ed piece in the LA Times entitled Marriage Isn't the Half of It, by Nancy D. Polikoff. The museum's publicity coordinator recounted, "The two guys were unfortunately torn off and thrown about the gallery along with some other embellishments."

Embellishments aside, it must be difficult lashing out against the inevitable. Even our illustrious governor said yesterday, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Let the fags and dykes marry already." And this statement was a bit of a shocker since Schwarzenegger has previously vetoed two same-sex marriage bills, not to mention he was the named defendant in the Prop 8 law suit Judge Walker ruled on Wednesday. So, if Governor Terminator is readying marriage licences to read spouse and spouse, rather than husband and wife, well then, traditional marriage devotees might indeed feel like the quicksand is falling fast.

Ms. Tibbles, still fun, made an astute observation by posing the grooms on a cake of American dollars. Californians need to face a very strong reality. Our fair state is in the financial crapper. So, now that gays and lesbians can marry, think of the money that will fuel our economy. How much does even a modest wedding ceremony cost? Now, multiply that by fifty thousand. (I'm just pulling a number out of my ass here. But since there were eighteen thousand same-sex marriages in that four month window in 2008, I would imagine fifty thousand weddings would happen in the blink of a drag queen's false eyelash.) Think of how the service industry would boom. Think of the taxable income. Think of the teachers who could be rehired, the roads repaved. And then, the cherry of this matrimonial sundae, think of how forty-three percent of us will be throwing tons of money at getting the subsequent divorce.

So, let's stop destroying artwork (and no egging, TPing, tagging, keying or dewigging while you're at it) and if you must, direct your personal angst at a punching bag, a therapist's couch or Mel Gibson. Because destruction only leads to reparation. The art piece in question has been sent back to Ms. Tibbles, really a dilly of a name, for repairs, to be back on display before the show closes September 12th. And believe you me, homosexuals are as at least resilient as their plastic replicas.