Every so often I read a blog entry or a newspaper column from the States that praises Canadians for being so laid-back about pot smoking and same-sex marriage. Cheers to Canadians, rave the authors: Bob and Jeff are getting stoned and tieing the knot in public. Canadians, though, are not nearly so loosy-goosy about these issues as some imagine. There are plenty of people in this country wandering around with the notion that pot causes irreversible genetic damage* and that, somehow, homosexual marriage will destroy the country or in some way affect their lives.

There are appeals to the "sacredness" of marriage, although I would point their dudgeon in the direction of marriage-oriented reality shows. There are those who believe that marriage's main purpose is procreation, which a) is not so, and b) would appear to invalidate childless heterosexual marriages. At any rate, even widespread same-sex unions would not affect birth rates, since presumably the small percentage of the population who identify as gay would not be having children anyway. Nor do I believe that same-sex unions will open the door for human cloning and other strange uses of reproductive techonology, as Margaret Somerville claims. For those who believe that minority genital usage will incur the wrath or even a flicker of interest from an invisible superbeing who decrees the course of a soul's eternal habitat, there can be no argument that will suffice to legitimize gay marriage (they adhere to the rule of GOOGSHOF), and we will let those people follow the advice of celibate old men and other adherents of feudal morality.

One of the greatest but unspoken issues, I'm guessing, is that people fear the spectacle of seeing two men or two women in public, holding hands without shame, without that wordless appeal for the approval of those who would protest against legalized gay union in the first place. This is the real horror, akin to the rich man's aversion to even the scantest forms of welfare: that minority groups might receive the same rights and privileges so routinely afforded the majority. R. Edwards of the Heritage Foundation puts it best when he describes equal rights for gays as "special rights": what the nobleman takes as his due must be pleaded for by his vassals.

Wading through the arguments against same-sex marriage becomes a syrupy slog as you realize that they are, to varying degrees, rooted in a primitive disgust, a dark corner of the human brain that cries out for control and spins in fear from the polymorphous nature of its own appetites. Moreover, the arguments are dispiriting in a fundamental sense; even as many of the authors high-five the Lord or the more secular Society, they display their contempt for spirituality and love. Marriage reduced to procreation, life reduced to transmission of "values," love reduced to bodily grinding and people reduced to their blameless genitals, until the whole affair becomes a tasteless demiglace that loses flavour as its substance diminishes. Beware these demented chefs who would have us eat gruel, day in, day out.

*One of The Lotus' uncles once lectured us about the horrible evils we would visit on our children by smoking pot. Apparently the generational rash of ADHD is caused by THC, that whirling molecule of nano-derangement, infiltrating the nucleus of the cell and square dancing with bits of our DNA. There you go: your hippie-dippie parents smoked dope in a field once, and as a consequence you're a seizure-ridden failure unable to learn basic math or hold down a job. Considering the proportion of the population who claim to have smoked pot at least once, I'm surprised that our schools and universities aren't filled with spastic children bouncing around the rooms like a game of multiplayer pinball. And this from a former principal. Imagine what strange drug-fear induced nightmares he must have witnessed every day.

parode - exode