GOP Marriage Hearings
As Senate Republicans get set to execute a "full-court push to educate the public on the importance of marriage" by holding interminable hearings on the topic, they'll no doubt be looking for matrimonially friendly witnesses from the GOP ranks. Among the individual sessions they'll be running over the next few weeks are "Healthy Marriage: What is it and why should we promote it?"; "The Benefits of Healthy Marriage"; and "What social science can tell us about marriage, divorce and children."
No doubt the first witness on their list was the Senate's own sexual Iron Man, the multiply hitched and notoriously priapic segregationist Sen. Strom "Sperm" Thurmond (R-S.C.). But he's dead, missed even by the love child who posthumously complicated Strom's grotesque legacy of fomenting race-based hate in this sweet land of liberty.
But if the Senate is willing to dip into America's House of Commons, they can always interview folks like Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) about how important marriage is. Or better yet, ask the Hoosier's illegitimate kid about how important parents can be–especially, parents who actually acknowledge and support their out-of-wedlock children.
And the Senate Republicans might call in former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for some riveting Whittaker Chambers-style testimony about the desanctification of marriage from one who knows the real deal. Gingrich, who doesn't seem to be doing very much these days anyway, once railed against Democrats for espousing "Woody Allen family values." That was back when Newt was only on wife number two (the one he married after dumping wife number one, his former high school math teacher). Now that he's on number three (happily wed to a former staffer), he surely has plenty of insight on the marriage issue.
As do a raft of other Republicans, including short-lived Speaker of the House and phone-sex freak Bob Livingston; former Sen. Helen Chenoweth (who helped put the 'ho back in Idaho during an extramarital affair for which she says God has forgiven her); Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.); and many more, no doubt to be named later by Larry Flynt after he stops fighting with fellow pornographer Rob Black over Reason's May cover story (on newsstands now).
None of this is to deny that marriage is a very good thing. But an election-year ploy aimed at demonizing gays for demanding access to that good thing is a really bad thing.