New Zealand parliament the other night legalized same-sex marriage. It made news all over the world.

But it’s nothing to celebrate. It is just the latest in a series of moral outrages eroding our finest traditions.

First, they came for our alchemy. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know how to change lead into gold.

Then, they came for our leeching. But I stood by, silently praying they would at least allow Doktor Schnabel von Rom to finish draining my Choler.

Now, the government has come for my marriage license. And there’s nobody to speak up for me here on Basement Life, the most popular blog on the Internet.

Somewhere on this flat Earth, someone must still have their god-given sense about them. But they don’t live anywhere near New Zealand. (For my friends back home, New Zealand is the country on the part of the map where it says “Thar be Dragons”).

In New Zealand, ever since Jesus walked the Holy Land, perpetually surrounded by 12 loosely garbed young men, their tawny skin glistening in the desert sun, The Gays have been busily pressing their agenda against our tight-fitting jeans. At first, we heteros didn’t mind helping a fellow out.

That’s why we gave The Gays the fashion and design industries. It’s why we invented softball teams for the women, and all-male choirs for the other women. We even conceded K Road, and just to be nice, we threw in an annual parade.

You’d think if any group of people in the world could be pimped with a parade, it would have to be The Gays. But no. Parades just weren’t enough for these ingrates. They wanted more. More, more, more, more. It just goes to show the old adage is true. Give them an inch, they take another seven inches.

How long must we heteros endure this persecution?  How long must we remain silent, cowering in one another’s man-caves, watching the rugby, rising in our seats as the beastly rivals grasp, and grab, and hold just to get their hands on a big ball? We heteros will not hide.

We will remind you that marriage is a timeless, static, god-ordained covenant between three people: a man, a woman, and God. Or five, if you count the divorce attorneys.

Oh, you will hear people say that for most of human history, marriage was a financial, political or community power sharing arrangement among sub-groups with vested interests in particular matches. These same people will also claim that the bride and groom had no say in the matter until modern times. They will say, ‘If marriage is a divine institution, and god is the same today, yesterday and forever, then why has the institution changed so dramatically in time and is so disparate by geography?’ They will say god at one time ordained polygamy, commanded a rapist to pay his victim’s father and to marry her, if she weren’t betrothed (which, by the way, isn’t in any Deuteronomy 22 of any bible I’ve ever read). 

Recently, I had a conversation just like this with one of these acrimonious atheist know-it-alls you meet sometimes, but you still love them even though they’re going to hell which is fine by me. Frankly, I’d only just met this man when we struck up a conversation waiting for a recent parade to begin. I could tell right away why he was an atheist. He was angry at god. It’s the same old story. You would never have to meet an atheist, let alone hear their reasons for their atheism, to know that. It’s just obvious.

Anyway, this atheist and I really had it out. Pretty soon it got really heated. We were both highly excited, barely able to catch our breath or to see each other in the dimness of the alleyway, as we exchanged blows. As our engagement reached its climax, the Atheist pulled a fast one.

‘Explain this to me,’ he said. ‘Your bible says it’s an abomination for a man to lie with a man. And that’s part of why you think you and I, let’s say, should never be allowed the sacrament of marriage?’

I agreed, seeing his logical trickery from a mile away.

“And yet, just a few verses above that, it says it is an abomination for a man to look at a menstruating woman.”

“Well, who wants to look at that,” I said. “Even when it isn’t her time of the month, my wife’s makes me a little queasy.”

“OK, but, have you taken any steps to ensure that other people do not look upon a menstruating woman.”

“Of course not.”

“Then under that logic, why the fuck would you bother telling me that you and I couldn’t marry? How is that even logical?”

“Because,” I said, basking in the glow of our denouement, “you’re using man’s logic. I follow god’s logic.”

With that, my atheist friend silently walked away, sighing.

But not before I gave him my phone number in case he wanted to debate some more.

(Note to self: Google ‘Leviticus’. Sounds like one of the books in the Catholic Apocrypha.)