Hitchens on Homosexual Hitching
Christopher Hitchens can always be counted on to offer a slightly different take on even the most discussed topics:
On the same floor as the Hitchens family live two chaps, who are as clearly spliced as any couple I know. They hold responsible Washington jobs, they take an interest in the civic health of the city, and they help raise the children of a previous marriage into which one of them had entered. (Never forget, by the way, the forgotten hell that was the consequence of pressure for gay people to try to marry heterosexuals and make a go of things.)
In any domestic emergency involving my wife or daughter, I would probably turn first to these neighbors. The only discomfiting thing I find about their domestic arrangements is their practice of clasping hands for grace before meals. I can’t make myself feel that my own marriage is undermined, or rather would be undermined, if they could legally tie the knot. Would I dance at their wedding? Undoubtedly, and always assuming I would be asked. Would my tenderly nurtured daughter go into shock? I can’t see it happening.
On the other hand, if Charlize Theron and her beau were to wed and to move in next door, neither I nor my wife (assuming that the beau is the one pictured at the Oscars) would have complete peace of mind. Indeed, the Ten Commandments specifically caution me only against other heterosexual marriages. I say they warn me, because these injunctions only bother to warn men against coveting their neighbor’s wives, or indeed any other of his animals or chattels. If this is all that God understands about the human nature he is said to have set in motion, we may all hope to slip by.
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When I become bored or irritated by the gay marriage battle–and I do, I sometimes do–I like to picture the writhing faces and hoarse yells of the mullahs and the fanatics. Godless hedonistic America, not content with allowing divorce and pornography, has taken from us our holy Taliban and our upright Saddam. It sends Jews and unveiled female soldiers to our lands, and soon unnatural brotherhood will be in the armed forces of the infidels. And now the godless have an election where all they discuss is the weddings of men to men and women to women! And then I relax, and smile, and ask my neighbors over, to repay the many drinks and kind gestures that I owe them.
Heh.
