Of Pigs And Proms

My thoughts exactly.

Like I said in the comments, we've been this way before. Less than a decade ago, we were told that anyone who thought civil partnerships would be the camel's nose for gay marriage was clearly a tin-foil hatted Jesus Freak. Now it turns out that not supporting gay marriage is a sign you're a tin-foil hat wearing Jesus Freak. Either way, they hate you, they really hate you.

Mind you, the old Endowment Flogger does have a point. Whichever side of the conservative movement you're on, the traditionalist wing or the minimalist government wing, once you accept that marriage is whatever the government says it is this week, what can't it do?

All of which reminds me of the guy who visits a farm and sees a pig with a bunch of medals hanging round its neck and a wooden leg. He asks the farmer what's going on and the farmer tells him about all the times the pig has saved the lives of members of his family, like pulling the farmer out of slurry pits, protecting his young daughter from wild dogs and waking them up when the house catches fire. The guy says 'well, OK, that explains the medals, but what about the wooden leg'? The farmer replies 'hey, a pig like that, you're not going to eat him all at once are you'?

Message to social conservatives: you are that pig and establishment conservatives are the farmer.

On the plus side, at least social conservatism's perfect record is intact: fifty years without ever having won one.

All of which means it's time to revisit the old advice about doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. Is there a better way? Yes, actually. There's a - possibly apocryphal - story about a US lesbian who sued her Mid-West High School to win the right to take her girlfriend to the Prom and not have to abide by the dress code. She won, of course, and on the day in question the two of them strode boldly into the Prom, doubtless dressed in matching boiler suits, followed by a pack of journos anxious to document how they 'rubbed the right's nose in diversity'.Except...

Something wasn't quite right. Band playing? Check! Decorations up? Check! Any noses to rub in diversity? Errr.... not so much.

In fact, their fellow students were all across town at a 'Not The Prom', having a whale of a time and blatantly keeping their noses unrubbed. That's the key point here. The State could demand the right for these two jerks to attend something called 'The Prom' but it couldn't breath life into it. Instead, these two were left as Queens of the Empty Room, proud holders of the right to walk round an empty gym. They'd have stuck it to The Man, if only the The Man had stuck around.

That's the secret right there. Gay marriage might be a tactical win for the forces of chaos, but it's also a sign of their strategic weakness. We've had a half a century of the Gaystapo on the rampage but in cultural terms, they're batting 0 out of 10. They're firmly mired in parody and pastiche unable to create a single lasting cultural institution of their own. Hence the desire to hijack other peoples.

So now the government has decided that gay marriage is legal. Well, just that then. It's time for the Churches to leave the Prom. They need to refuse to perform legal marriages. If - for some insane reason - Christians want to follow up their Church wedding by inviting the state to get involved in their lives they can turn up at State Registry Office 2473 some wet Wednesday when they're both off work and fill the papers out. Other than that, the Hell with it.

Nothing will let the air out of the gay marriage movement like that moment when these tools are all performing fellatio on each other on the steps of State Registry Office 2473 (take that, daddeo) and a young Christian couple in jeans ignore them as they pass by on the way to get their Offical Government Stamp of Marital Approval.

Think of it as their Marily Manson moment.