Good news-you still have until tomorrow to slap that \Hooray For Oppressive Ideological Institutions!"" button onto your backpack in support of our fearless leader's decree branding this ""Marriage Protection Week.""
According to Dubya and his ultra-conservative chums, marriage is under attack-not from divorce or even the omnipresent ""tehr-rists,"" but from a far more insidious axis of evil: single parents, homosexual couples and unmarried heterosexual cohabitants.
So, as a good American, you can either get out the duct tape and plastic sheeting and prepare for the end of traditional values, or you can do your part to force your beliefs onto others' personal lives via public policy by supporting the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would restrict all legal domestic partner benefits to spouses.
Is this really necessary? Despite the best efforts of some, isn't this still a free country, where a girl has the right not to settle for anything less than getting hitched to David Duchovny, Adrien Brody or a high-ranking Nine West executive if she so desires? Why must she get the financial shaft in the meantime, along with same-sex and unmarried couples?
The answer is quite simple: For the wedded, it is not enough to be morally superior if there's no bottom line to show for it. Sure, sharing is caring, but isn't the economy shaky enough without effecting such a disruption on the concentration of wealth in the paltry name of equal rights?
Another aim of Marriage Protection Week is to ensure that every child is raised in a loving home. (For some reason, the focus groups didn't take to ""Your Family Is Different and That's Not OK Week."") The very author of these words personifies the tragedy that is divorce. Though she may attend a top university and contribute to a prestigious paper, she only channels her energy thusly-between acts of self-mutilation and petty crime-to temporarily stifle the self-hatred.
For matrimony, and only matrimony, begets a nurturing home. So pitch in and insult or pity that acquaintance of yours with a nontraditional family, just so they don't start thinking they have equal worth as a human being.
Last but not least, the ""homosexual agenda"" is threatening the sanctity of marriage. (""I Can't Win Re-election On My Record, So I'll Start Mobilizing My Cadre of Homophobic Fundamentalist Nutballs Week"" didn't test well either.) Because heaven forbid those of alternate sexuality gain some semblance of mainstream acceptance.
So, what can you, the citizen who is concerned, but not enough to put any marked effort into it, do? Well, you can visit the Traditional Values Coalition's Web site and, for a mere 20 dollars, purchase their ""Marriage Protection Kit,"" containing pre-scribed form letters to your representatives for you to sign and mail. In short, democracy at its most robust.
And, just so there's no misunderstanding, despite the sarcastic diatribe above, I am not claiming that marriage is bad or useless. In fact, my future plans entail it-in the form of the rich men who are going to buy me lots of expensive, pretty things in exchange for having me at their beck and call as a trophy mistress.
