Religion, same-sex marriage and one very angry man

I know a man in Riverside named Harvey who goes ballistic whenever I broach the subject of Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriages in California. His eyes narrow, his voice rises and he gets absolutely squeaky with rage over the possibility of Gus and Homer getting married.

Gus and Homer are not their real names. They live down the block from Harvey and try to be as friendly as possible even though they know he loathes them. They have been together for years and only recently have begun talking about tying the knot.

Harvey, being an evangelical Christian, cannot stand the idea of two men walking down the street holding hands, much less indulging in more intimate expressions of love in the privacy of their bedroom. He considers himself a real man and would gladly beat the crap out of both Gus and Homer if they weren’t bigger and stronger than he is.

I personally don’t care about what anyone does in his bedroom or who marries whom.

Gays seem to be the only ones who actually want to be married anyhow.

Heterosexuals have taken to just playing house until the glow wears off, maybe through the weekend.

I was thinking about this the other day and created a ritual for those who would like to legitimize a temporary arrangement, not through holy matrimony, but through a ceremony of holy relationship, which is the key word in today’s random coupling.

It would in some ways soothe the consciences of the more sensitive rutting couples and save money on gowns and rings.

My relationship ritual would begin, “Do you, Susan, take Roger as your temporary sexual partner to have and to hold as long as the weekend shall last? And do you, Roger, promise to lust, perform and pay for dinner and drinks until the Monday you do part? Therefore in the name of Bacchus and Aphrodite, I now pronounce you hunk and hot mama. You may pour the cosmopolitans.”

I mentioned my idea to Harvey, who didn’t think it was a bit funny because, you see, he doesn’t think much of anything is funny. I recall that he almost laughed once at a humorous comment by Sarah Palin on television but then realized it was Tina Fey; he had accidentally turned on “Saturday Night Live,” the program bent on the destruction of morality, or what’s left of it. He hasn’t laughed since.

Harvey, by the way, considers Palin a great American even though she does happen to be a woman and he doesn’t feel women should vote or lead. I keep in touch with him because it gives me inroads into the blurry thinking of the religious right.

Harvey believes, among other things, that God intended marriage to be between only man and woman, that abortion for any reason is a mortal sin, that women should be confined to cooking and bearing children and not clutter the culture by working, that only the Bible and not evolution should be taught in schools and that only white males should be eligible to run for president.

I am fascinated by the rigidity of his thought process, and in those rare moments when we argue about God and evolution it feels less like a Darrow-Bryan debate than it does like someone monologuing on the existence of an entity no one has ever seen. Only if Harvey would actually trot God out of a back room and introduce him in person to an audience of atheists would I say you’re right, man, you win; there is a God.

I’m more pantheist than theist, which includes believing there is something almost godlike in the glory of rain and sunset, in love and an aqua ocean, and in little children and puppies. If there turns out to be more than one god, well that’s OK too. I’ll go back to being a Catholic and we can all march together to kingdom come.

Those of us appalled by Proposition 8 are not trying to interpret morality. There are human rights at stake beyond anyone’s capacity to give or take away, and I believe that compassion is an emotion that acknowledges few barriers.

If guys like Harvey had their way, cultural evolution would come to a screeching halt and we would be in danger once more of outlawing interracial marriage and bowing to the archaic ecclesiastical rules that determine what is and what is not sinful.

I’m going to get Harvey’s thinking on that too and then see how he feels about forbidding marriage between a man and woman with IQs lower than 75 to prevent more idiots from populating the world.

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