So the backlash mounts in intensity: evangelical Christians in Westland (just 20 miles from Ann Arbor, as the crow flies, which says nothing, really, because evangelicals interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle in Concord said the exact same thing, basically, and Concord is 30 miles from downtown San Francisco) interviewed by the Detroit News saying they voted for Bush because he was on God’s side and would prevent all those homos from getting too full of themselves and their disturbed notions of being able to have their relationships validated by the law and being able to visit one another in the hospital; a gay college student’s car spray-painted in Statesboro, GA with slogans like “GOD SAVE YOU”; gay businesses in Denver are shot up with pellet guns; couples from Oregon to Ohio are already fearful of losing their health insurance and any other benefits that they may have had, because, of course, all these amendments were ever about was protecting the sanctity of marriage; overseas in London, a bunch of teenagers are arrested for beating a gay man to death; and in merry Australia, John Howard’s government is going to re-introduce legislation that will ban gay couples from adopting children from overseas.

And meanwhile, we have shows on ABC like “Wife Swap,” in which heterosexual couples exploit matrimony on television for the profit of the networks and for the general exaltation of the sacred institution that is marriage; and rappers have albums at the top of the charts with titles like Thug Matrimony: Married to the Streets.

But we’re the real threat to marriage. Uh-huh.