Now that Joe Biden has pulled President Obama up to the altar of gay marriage, the question of gay marriage once again divides our nation, demonstrating that however daunting the challenges we face, Americans are always willing to engage issues of timeless moral import. I myself would like to offer a modest solution that can satisfy all parties, both those who support and those who oppose marriage among homosexuals.
I propose we ban marriage among Homo sapiens -- all members of the human species. This resolves the issue of homosexual marriage once and for all. It will certainly please the anti-gay marriage crowd because homosexuals won't be able to marry. Meanwhile, homosexuals will have the same right to marry as other Homo sapiens -- none -- whatever state those Homo sapiens live in, including the state of intolerance.
This solution also rules out such treacherous gray areas as arise, for instance, when a bisexual marries a same-sex homosexual partner or a homosexual marries a straight for the sake of taxes or a green card. It will also make the tax laws a lot simpler.
Now we have all heard that marriage between homosexuals is most unnatural. But then, so is marriage between Homo sapiens. The one is as great a crime against nature as the other. I know this is true because the Bible tells me so. In I Corinthians 7, Saul of Tarsus, a.k.a. Saint Paul, lays out strict guidelines for marriage. And in the first verse, he presents the most unnatural rationale for marriage imaginable: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman."
Come again? That's his starting point for justifying marriage?! Judging from the universal behavior of birds, bees, elephants, and all other nature dwellers, one might think it the most natural thing in the world for a man and woman to touch one another, or a man and a man, woman and woman, or plurals and combinations therein.
St. Paul. however, has decided that this natural act is damnable. However, he also recognizes that it's bound to happen, which he calls "fornication." So he begrudgingly proposes a solution that calls for the least amount of (natural) sex possible: a man and woman can avoid being deemed and damned as fornicators if they live together under some sanctified arrangement. As he says about widows who want to remarry, "for it is better to marry than to burn."
Can homosexual marriage be any more unnatural than Homo sapiens marriage when the latter is based on the unnatural idea that sex is evil? Marriage, homosexual and Homo sapiens alike, is clearly an unnatural act. Hence it should be banned.
Meanwhile, back in the Old Testament (O.T.), Homo sapiens make a terrible mess of marriage, or perhaps marriage makes a mess of Homo sapiens. After reading about the man who turned his concubine (okay, maybe not his wife but close) over to a mob of men to be gang-raped in order to save his own skin and then cut her into 12 pieces (Judges 19.25 ff.); the soap opera of Abraham, Sarai, and Hagar; or David sending his best friend to his death so he can seize his wife for himself (yeah, that David), one might well wonder whether Homo sapiens should marry at all. After all, the first married couple was a disaster: deception and betrayal resulting in eviction from their home and raising two sons one of whom is so filled with jealousy and rage he murders his brother. Way to go, Adam and Eve.
Opponents of gay marriage often point to injunctions against homosexuality in Genesis and Leviticus, but that stuff is mild compared with the Bible's clear view of marriage as racked with violence, paranoia, and deceit. Yet there is an even more compelling Biblical reason to abandon marriage between Homo sapiens. Marriage in the O.T. is a wild, passionate affair for men and women both. Lilith, Eve's contemporary and very possible Adam's first flame, hangs out by the river mating with wild beasts. Men take multiple wives -- two wives, four wives, whole harems of hundreds of wives! Marriage today is just a watered-down version of the real thing when giants strode the earth and mated with the daughters of men and saw that it was good. Homo sapiens marriage clearly ain't what it used to be. It is defunct, debunked, and defunked. Time to let it go.
Yet let us not dismiss the compassion for homosexuals displayed by those who oppose gay marriage. Given Homo sapiens' high divorce rate, the endless string of abusive and murderous spouses that marriage produces, and the simmering brew of suppressed tension within many long-term relationships, one can only thank opponents of gay marriage for trying to save their gay brethren from marriage's evils.
And then there's the well-known fact that the best way to reduce gay sex is to promote gay marriage. Homo sapiens have observed this phenomenon in their own heterosexual marital lives for millennia. Why are homosexuals angry at the well-intentioned efforts of the anti-gay movement to encourage gay sex by preventing gay marriage? No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.
Yet the opponents of gay marriage themselves provide the most effective argument against Homo sapiens marriage. Gay bashers are often insecure about their own sexual identities and most threatened by the very existence of gays. Yet they are often the same folk who bully "nerds", "geeks", and others blessed with an excess of sapience! In other words, they hate true sapiens as much as they hate gays! Yet many of these gay-bashers and sapiens-bashers actually support Homo sapiens marriage even while they oppose homosexual marriage! Surely they will reverse their support of Homo sapiens marriage once they realize that they hate sapience ("intellect," from the Latin sapiens) in homos as much as they hate sex in gays.
With all this in mind, we must conclude that one day our great nation, inspired by those who oppose marriage between gays, will unite to outlaw the insidious institution of marriage between Homo sapiens.