Documentary Evidence
NB: The following was transcribed verbatim from an actual videotape found in the tape library of Heather Donahue, the noted documentary filmmaker. Hullabaloo regrets the occasionally coarse language, but we’ve decided to retain it so that the full extent of the unfortunate condition into which one of our regular correspondents seems to have sunk will become clear.
All too clear, alas.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Tristero, s’up?
I’m feeling a little weird right now. I don’t feel so good.
What’s the matter? You drop that tab of Sunshine I know you’ve been bogartin’ since ’67? (laughs)
Har de har har. Here’s what got me so freaked. Barring some miraculous infusion of spine, character, and principle from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, tomorrow George W. Bush will once more heap enormous shame on my country.
Yup. Looks like he’s actually gonna get on tv and propose a constitutional ban on marriages because he doesn’t like the biology of the people getting married.
Doesn’t that strike you as completely, like utterly, in-fucking-sane????
No, tristero, it doesn’t. Oh, it’s not like I don’t support gay marriage or something. “Course I do, ‘course I do. Everyone does. I mean everyone, except Bush and those idiots. It’s just that there are entirely rational reasons why Bush is doing this.
What??? Don’t you get it? The day after tomorrow, Fred Phelps will be officially no longer half the kook that any member of Lamda will suddenly be. Sure Phelps’s is clearly clinically manic, no one likes him (at least not publicly) but don’t you see, his delusions are closer to the unambiguously expressed direction the president of the United States wants for America than anyone interested in providing gays with civil rights.
And don’t you see what’s gonna happen?? After tomorrow, it’s duck season on gays, lesbians, and the transgendered. People will die, people are gonna die! Good people will die, smart people, people who are loved, and who are raising great familes, all because tomorrow the president of the United States is gonna endorse writing into the Constitution, the Constitution! for crissakes, that gays, lesbians, and transgenders can’t legally marry. That is absolutely insane! Do you realize what would happen if they passed that abomination?
Okay, tristero, hold on, calm down, okay, calm do…
I can’t calm down! Look, you know the right just as well as I do. They’re unbelievably sneaky bastards. They pretend they’re anti-abortion, but they’re really anti-contraception, and that’s not even it – they’re really anti-sex except with a government license. But that’s not all of it, either. Look at Santorum, he thinks he can tell even a married couple how to fuck in their own bedroom. These people are flat out crazy perverts.
So y’gotta wonder, what are they hiding? What aren’t they talking about when it comes to this amendment? You think this is just about gays? Well yes it is, my God, the violence. And think how’d they suffer if this thing passed!
Dude, shut up! I’m trying t’ tell you…
No, wait, these people, these rightwingers oh, they got lotsa “biological criteria,” and not just gender fetishes, over what makes a proper marriage. This don’t stop with homosexuality.
A while back, Atrios caught the Washington Times expressing “concern” or “distress” over blacks and whites having sex. And you know about Bob Jones’ University notorious policy to prohibit “interracial” dating, like they’ll ever permit it even it’s no longer an official ban. Oh yeah, there’s a lot of people on the right, the very same folks deeply worried about women having sex with each other, who are also deeply concerned about the numerous cultural problems flowing from the spreading practice of “miscegenation.” After all, until quite recently, black/white marriages weren’t recognized everywhere in the US. So, there will be no reason why the US can’t revisit the reasoning behind the ban and extend the purview of the anti-marriage amendment.
But tristero, will you just shut u…
But that isn’t all. Many people seriously worried about gay marriage are also majorly upset about the moral issues around abortion. The question of the woman’s culpability is a wrenching one for them, and most of them won’t talk about what they really think about it. But other groups will. The “christian” Reconstructionists – some of the friendly folks behind intelligent design Creationism- theyll talk about it. A woman who has had an abortion is a murderer.
Should murderers in a Christian society be permitted to marry? Why? Marriage is a holy sacrament, y’know, it’s not just a fucking piece of paper giving you and your spouse legal rights. You befoul the sanctity of marriage when you permit murderers to marry! The question for these people is not whether a murderer should marry but whether a woman who murders her own child should be permitted to live. The Bible says you don’t suffer a witch to live. Ditto baby killers.
Okay, this isn’t funny anymore, you’re starting to seriously scare me. Let me explain…
Not yet. America is, as Dobson and his ilk are always so eager to remind us, a Christian country from the beginning. And Christian it must stay. No more Jewish/Christian marriages. Just as important, it’s becoming time to address the serious problems that Christians have with so-called Catholics…
And what about sluts and whores? Seriously, should non-virgin women marry? Other cultures have problems with that, why should the US condone second-rate marriages? The anti-marriage amendment gives us a chance at keeping marriage only between virgins.
Oh, crissakes, that’s silly, it could never happen in the US.
You’re right, it can’t, because we don’t have an anti-marriage amendment yet. That’s why it can’t happen here – it’s not because we’re “more sensible” people than the Afghans under the Taliban and wouldn’t permit it – we’re the most religious First World country in the world, y’know. It’s simply because legally it is impossible and that’s the only reason why it can’t happen here. But if there is an anti-marriage amendment, it can happen here and, if history is any guide, it will.
Okay, tristero, you done for now? Good! It’s time to get back to Planet Reality, my friend. Look, I am as worried as you are, but let’s just think about what’s actually gonna happen, not what could maybe happen. Everyone, but everyone agrees on this, that the chances of Congress passing a constitutional amendment that bans marriages are exactly zero. You’re hallucinating if you think this will lead to wholesale, violent oppression of the Jews. Oh, sorry, I meant, gays, just ignore the slip.
Are you serious?? That’s supposed to make me feel better? Has 5 years of Bush so warped your sense of the truly bizarre that you don’t see this as flat out surreal, as in Dali Persistence of Memory surreal? The fact that the amendment has no chance of passing, THAT’S supposed to make me feel that what’s gonna happen is LESS psychotic? What’s he doin it for then? Huh? That just makes it even more insane, not less. What the hell is going on? Has everyone lost their mind?
Tristero, you know very well what’s going on. Bush is proposing the anti-marriage amendment, even though he knows it won’t pass, simply to help elect Republicans in the fall.
Ahhh! My God, my head, my head! Did I hear that right. Are you telling me, let me get this straight…
Are you telling me, and this is not a joke, man, tell the truth, I’m starting to lose it big time here… You’re saying the reason Bush is gonna do his best to act like the Man From Fucking La Mancha tomorrow is because he desperately needs to make sure every modern-day witchburner and every American Nazi comes out and votes Republican in the fall elections or the party falls from power? I don’t believe I heard you say that.
Is that really what GOP power depends on, the white supremacists and religious fanatics? That can’t be, that just can’t be…this can’t be happenin…
Wait a minute…y’know, come to think of it, that’s it. This really is all too crazy to be real, y’know, mebbe, I really did eat that Sunshine after all, haven’t seen it in a while…
Yup, that’s it! I’m tripping! This is just a bad trip! None of it’s real, none of it, the anti-marriage amendment, and your crazy reasoning, why you’re just a hallucination, a hologram of my imagination. You’re gone, I can’t see you anymore! Oh, thank God.
(laughs with relief) A bad trip, just a verrrrrrrrrry bad trip. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s just a bad trip. It’s not gonna happen.
Whew! Now I can face tomorrow.
[VIDEO ENDS. TRANSCRIPT ENDS]