I Hope You Like Your STDs

Last Saturday, my mother spent the night. Her plan was to get up and go to my sister's church (right down the road from me) on Sunday morning, then I would drop her and Sam off at the coffee shop where my brother works on Armory Square in Syracuse while I ran around the corner to do some birthday shopping at the record store (my wife turned a whopping 35 on Thursday), then the three of us would go somewhere and get lunch.

We were on our way to the coffee shop downtown, all just talking, enjoying hanging out together, when we passed a small throng of people gathered outside an official-looking building holding signs, milling about.

I couldn't make out each and every sign, but I could read the biggest. It was kind of sloppily done, but in big letters at the top it read "I HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR STDs."

Which is a mean sort of thing to say, really, no matter who you're saying it to.

Underneath that, he had scrawled some other stuff. It was sort of a long explanation of that first comment and I can't remember it word for word, but it was something to the effect of "Sex isn't supposed to be dangerous. One man/one woman is God's plan."

That's not it quite. It was a little longer and more pompous and not very nice sounding, but that's the gist.

My mother and I did sort of a simultaneous "hmmm" and then I commented that today was the day.

Last Sunday, same sex marriage officially became a legal reality in New York State. The law had been passed some weeks back, but last Sunday was the official go-date, the official you-can-actually-do-this date, the first day ever in New York history that two people of the same sex could actually really truly get a legal marriage.

Pretty cool, if you're like me and think that it's about damn time.

Not cool, I guess, for some.

I saw the sign and kind of did a "hmmm" and then I dropped them off at the coffee shop and then I bought some The National and some Adele for my wife's birthday and then I had a delicious black bean soup and an even better roasted veggie sandwich for lunch, and my day was pretty nice, relaxing, happy.

But that sign bugged me. The more I thought about it later on, the more it annoyed me.

It bugged for a few reasons.

First, it bugged me, because the guy with the sign and the people gathered around him were basically just being assholes.

Now, I say they were just being assholes without thinking that you must be an asshole to oppose the whole notion of gay marriage. You can oppose gay marriage and still be a decent, loving, kind, good sort of person. A decent loving kind good person with some very wrong opinions, if you ask me, but not necessarily an asshole.

These people, though, were just being assholes.

Had they been standing outside the legislative building on the day of the vote with anti-gay-marriage signs, there might have been some non-assholish point to it. Had they even been standing on a street corner or in front of a senator's office last Sunday, holding those signs just to express their dismay, there might have been a quality of non-assholishness to what they were doing.

But they weren't trying to stop a vote. They weren't trying to get a state politician voted out during the next round of elections. And, honestly, they weren't really even trying to change the minds of those who disagreed with them.

They were standing in front of a courthouse, holding signs, protesting the weddings that were taking place inside. Forcing people who had loved each other for years and finally had been given the right to marry to walk by a line of people holding hateful signs, rejecting them, insulting them.

They were there just to ruin someone else's happy occasion. Because they didn't like it.

That makes them assholes.

But that sign bugged me for more reasons than that. Petty reasons, maybe. Or maybe not.

It bugged me in part because it was illogical. Poorly reasoned. Backwards and stupid. And it bugged me even more because it was wimpy, spineless, half-assed, and cowarldy.

It bugged me because it was illogical and poorly reasoned in that "I hope you like your STDs" is a pretty stupid thing to say to people about to get married.

"I hope you like your STDs" might be a mean but at least accurate thing to say to people who have decided to commit their lives to all kinds of casual fornications and copulations and plain old bumping uglies with strangers. But, and I feel like we shouldn't have to really even mention this, I feel like we should all know this already, but, but, but... committed sex is, you know, actually a good way to avoid STDs.

So, you know, "I hope you like your STDs" isn't just a mean thing to say to two people who are about to forsake all others and commit their lives to each other, it's also a blazingly, achingly stupid thing to say. It makes no sense.

And it makes no sense because STDs aren't entirely orientation specific. I mean, yeah, I know, in the early days of HIV/AIDS it was the gay community in this country that took the brunt, that suffered the most. But STDs aren't a gay issue, they're a multiple partners issue. So it seems like maybe this sign shouldn't so much be marched around in front of a building hosting gay marriages, but might be more sensibly hoisted in front of any of the very hetero night clubs on Armory Square, or in front of one of the local frat houses, or maybe in front of one of Syracuse's numerous strip clubs. Of course, the carrier would be far more likely to get his ass kicked in any of those places, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

So, yes, "I hope you like your STDs" is a mean thing to say, and that bugs me, and it's a stupid thing to say, and somehow that bugs me even more.

But the rest of the sign wasn't just stupid too; it was cowardly. Half-assed. Wimpy.

This whole "one man + one woman, so says God" bumper sticker stuff really gets on my nerves.

It gets on my nerves because everybody spouts it off like it's biblical, when it's not.

I mean, yes, I know, the male-female thing is pretty biblical. But the one + one thing, not so much.

Moses had two wives.

Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

King David had 8 wives.

And so on, so forth.

So quit it, just quit.

And then, here's the thing. Here's why this is so half-assed.

There is, of course, debate about what God wants. I mean, among believers, among Christians, even though some will insist with a straight face that the message is perfectly obvious and there are no two ways about it, there is, among believers, debate about how mad God gets when people of the same sex touch each others' naughty parts. What the Bible "says" and what the Bible "means" are interpreted by different people in different ways. Some will of course claim that they're not "interpreting" anything at all, that they're just reading the very unambiguous Word of God. These people are lying. To themselves, usually, but still lying. Everybody is interpreting.

But let's go and assume that those who are interpreting it in a more traditional, more conservative way-- the anti-gay-marriage crowd-- are right.

If they're right, then protesting gay marriage is half-assed. It's lame. It's wimpy. It's cowardly.

'Cause the Bible doesn't say a damn thing about gay marriage.

The stuff that they throw out there all the time isn't about gay marriage; it's about gay sex.

So when guys like the guy with this sign tell you that we can't allow gay marriage in this state because it goes against God's will, they're kind of full of shit. They're kind of gutless.

It's the gay sex they should be bugging out about.

If they're right, we're already doomed. The marriage license, the legal rights, that's all just extra stuff.

If God's mad, he's mad about the boinking and poking and rubbing and hot stuff.

These guys are just too cowardly to fight the real fight.

These Republican state senators with the impassioned speeches about how they can't vote to legalize gay marriage because it conflicts with their faith, with what they believe is the will of God?

If they had any balls at all, they'd be voting to outlaw gay sex. If they had the courage of their convictions, they'd be demanding that the police be sent in to shut down gay night clubs. They'd be sending in cops to stop the copulation when those "roommates" down the road turned out the lights.

But that would never sell.

That would never sell because it would be clearly and obviously and unambiguously the kind of bigotry that most of us don't very much like.

If these people had the courage of their convictions, though, they'd do it. These protestors, politicians. They'd step it up. They wouldn't declare war on gay marriage, but on gayness itself.

And why stop there?

If they really had any interest in bringing biblical ethics to New York State sexual conduct, they'd outlaw divorce.

Jesus, if you remember, didn't like divorce. Not one bit. I don't blame him. I don't like it either. Jesus had more to say about divorce than he did about gay marriage, that's for sure.

And he had even more to say about fornication.

Fornication is a big one in the New Testament. I know, because as a church-going teenager I kept checking and double checking. Fornicators were definitely on that going-to-hell list, along with witches and blasphemers.

And yet, fornication is perfectly legal-- rampant, even-- all throughout New York State, and none of our biblically driven representatives are doing a damn thing about it, no one is trying to outlaw it, and I haven't seen a single protester outside Adult World or the Salt City Bookstore or that XXX theater down the road from my favorite Asian market (where you can get a huge jar of the best-ever curry for cheap cheap cheap).

These guys don't have the guts. The gumption. The, if you'll allow me to be vulgar, nads.

They claim that God has spoken, but they only listen, they only act, when God's word gives them the excuse to pick on the unpopular and marginalized.

Heroes. Noble souls, all of them.

Like I said before, assholes.