Argentina, at last check, is not yet writhing in flames. Canada, as far as I can see from my window, is still right up there, stoic and mild, smelling of pine trees and bitumen, watching lots of hockey, shooting guns, being Canadian. The Netherlands? Why, still crisp and clean, efficiently blond as ever. It's shocking, really.
After all, you'd think they'd be downright miserable. You'd think they'd be in country-wide group therapy, hating and hurling and spitting, maybe a few riots, some stabbings, panic in the streets, the very fabric of their various shell-shocked societies unraveling like Mel Gibson at a bat mitzvah.
In fact, it would appear that millions of people across a surprisingly large number of dashing, industrious countries all over the world -- including Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and even adorable little Iceland -- are still not yet imploding, not yet suffering the furious wrath of God, not yet dying in unchecked anguish before our very eyes.
What to make of it? After all, in each and every one of these sinful nations, gay people have been happily and legally getting married (and, presumably, divorced, remarried and tossed about on the same socio-emotional rollercoaster as their straight brethren) every single day, for months and years and -- in the case of the Netherlands -- nearly a decade now.
What the hell is wrong with them? Didn't they get the newsletter? Don't they know how very wrong, sinful, sick and perverted they all so obviously are? Haven't they heard the hoarse wails of the terrified Mormon elders, the raspy screams of the obsolete Vatican, the tightened bowels of confused fundamentalists of nearly every major religion worldwide, all of them absolutely positive that allowing certain kinds of consenting adults who love each other to get married will spell the end of civilization, families, innocence, the military, God's bitter and judgmental love as we know it? Someone should send them a pamphlet.
Meanwhile, back here in the land of fear and rainbow flags and rivers of fundamentalist misinformation flowing like Coors Light at a NASCAR rally, we still can't seem to figure anything out. The stillborn bastard troll known as Prop 8 has finally been overturned by a fine federal judge, deemed unconstitutional by a mile, not to mention unconscionable, unrealistic, not a little bit hateful and just plain dumb.
No matter. It has, of course, already been appealed by tiny groups of angry people who really hate other groups of people, and will be contested and argued over, debated and slapfighted for months on its way to the wonky Ninth Court of Appeals, all possibly culminating in a grand and furious finale as the case finally stumbles into the conservative, uptight U.S. Supreme Court by 2012 or so, just in time to induce/commemorate the apocalypse. Perfect....
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Mark Morford is the author of The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism, a mega-collection of his finest columns for the SF Chronicle and SFGate. Get it at daringspectacle.com or Amazon. He recently wrote about the dark, magnificent horror of the BP spill, the KFC Double Down, and what it's like being part of the evil liberal conspiracy. His website is markmorford.com. Join him on Facebook;, or email him. Not to mention...