But what a task, with word sneaking out that PFLAG meetings are a good place for single straights to meet
Though we’re working awfully hard to bring about the destruction of marriage, once in a while something gets past us.
During the recent debate in the Senate over the marriage protection amendment, supporters displayed charts and graphs proving without a doubt that legalizing same-sex marriage leads to fewer marriages, more out-of-wedlock births, and buck teeth. The amendment supporters did lose, but they promise to continue the fight to prevent gays from marrying so the institution will be spared our perilous influence.
And we promise to keep fighting for marriage so we can ruin it.
The same week of the Senate performance in Washington, the Michigan GLBT newspaper Between The Lines ran a story about two straight people who found love at Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. This organization, which exists because gays do, has gone and fostered a traditional marriage.
Does headquarters know about this?
It isn’t easy to bring down an age-old institution, even one that straight people have damaged so. But we’re trying, and to discover that a group that supports we gay folks has aided and abetted a marriage of straights well, I’m just thankful I had nothing to do with it.
In years past we ruined individual marriages by wedding straight people ourselves. That guaranteed a lot of pain for all involved, but it was so scattershot. We’re thinking much bigger these days. Now, with our demand that we be able to marry each other, and with the conservative conviction that if we get that right the institution will collapse, we’re aiming to bring down the whole thing.
We’ve given up hand-to-hand combat. We’ve gone nuclear.
We will not have our plans thwarted by gays and straights who believe the wild idea that people should be able to marry the one they love. I say it’s time to send a team to Michigan to investigate the goings-on.
I can provide some information for their briefing papers. Tom Nelson, 76, and Linda Karle, 66, are both widowed. Each has a gay son, and has belonged to PFLAG Detroit for at least a decade, though Nelson hadn’t been active for years. After the death of his wife he returned to the group, and rekindled a friendship with Karle, which grew into love.
The two planned to marry the weekend after the story ran. As I’m writing this, I can feel the appalling ickiness of a love gone horribly right.
Nelson and Karle are now co-presidents of PFLAG Detroit. Nelson believes life is about love.
“It’s not being loved, it’s loving,” he said. “I found that out when my wife was dying. I was able to give to her without any return. We all think about being loved, but loving unconditionally is a marvelous thing. That’s what PFLAG is all about loving our children unconditionally.”
I see the right-thinking members of PFLAG couldn’t have prevented Nelson from sharing his heart if they had thrown him in a closet. But couldn’t they have persuaded the couple simply to keep quiet about their relationship? Does everybody have to know? And why do they feel it’s so important to marry?
I just bet word gets out that PFLAG is a good place for single straight people to meet. It will be hard for gays looking for support to receive it with all that disgusting heterosexual mating going on.
It’s an ugly scenario: traditional marriage busting out all over due to PFLAG meetings. It will be our great shame, but not, I vow, our undoing. We’ll proceed with our lofty goal of destroying marriage in America. As to what we should destroy after that, contact headquarters with your suggestions.
Leslie Robinson is learning to think big. You can read more of her columns at www.GeneralGayety.com.
E-mail LesRobinsn@aol.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition, June 23, 2006.