Gay Marriage Debates vs. Wipeout!

Honestly, if this entire column could be about how great Wipeout! is -- and is there anything not to love about people getting knocked on their ass by low-tech obstacle course punishments in which they're punched, thrown into icy water, and catapulted through the air past stuff that's on fire? -- then I'd be way happier than I am right now. Instead I have to keep on talking about all the knuckleheaded fools parading endlessly across my TV screen telling me about why I don't understand the true nature of marriage and how I shouldn't be allowed to have one.

Since the California supreme court's decision the other day, I've been revisited by that smug little dummy of a beauty queen whose name I've just grown weary of writing, a moronic ex-NFL pastor from a megachurch in San Diego who thinks that his chosen religious beliefs should also be inflicted on me and my husband, even though we don't remember signing up to be members of his congregation, and a Texas congressman who thinks it all has to do with the government's need to police public "morality."

The former NFL guy is named Miles McPherson and he's now a minister in San Diego and getting an unusual amount of career traction thanks to CNN and Larry King, on whose show he debated lesbian comic Carol Leifer. Leifer was boringly polite to him, refusing to tell him that he was being illogical and that his beliefs were fascist, allowing McPherson to just blather about how kids without fathers wind up in jail and that the next step after gay marriage is group marriage and child molestation (in his words, "marrying a minor," like how Jerry Lee Lewis did back in the good old days when gays knew their place and kept their mouths shut about everything). And in spite of there being a professional funny person involved in the debate, the biggest crack-up lines came from Larry King. "Same sex. It stays on board here," he says as a segment opener, and if anyone can figure out what that even means, then please contact me. Later he asked Leifer why gays just didn't leave things as they are. Why keep fighting? Her response was something about how it's a civil rights issue and that time is on our side and blahblahblah. But the real reason is BECAUSE WE'RE BORED NOW THAT THE L WORD IS OFF THE AIR, LARRY.

My other favorite head-scratch moment came from Congressman John Culberson of Crazytown, Texas, whose rambling answer to a high school student's question about gay marriage live on C-SPAN went something like this:

"Tenth Amendment means that the states have first a responsibility ...for public safety, public health, public morality ... it's self-evident that you've got to have a marriage between a man and a woman or society's not gonna make it [ chuckle ]. You're not gonna have a fruitful, growing, productive civilization unless marriage is between a man and a woman ... history will show you that ... their private life is their private business ... I don't wanna hear about somebody's private behavior."

Then he talked about interstate commerce.

Then he said, in summation, "Fundamentally the right of privacy is fundamental."

Translation: "If gay marriage becomes legal, then it will replace other marriage and no one would be allowed to make babies and EWWWW SOME MEN ARE TOUCHING WIENERS SOMEWHERE!!! DO NOT WANT!!!"

Meanwhile, the ladies on The View have decided that "outing" is their new thing (from 1990) to be upset about. They had Kirby Dick, the awesome director of Outrage, the new documentary that names names of hypocritical antigay politicians who are secretly gay themselves. None of the women seemed to have seen the film and were therefore confused about the difference between simply outing someone for sport and using it to shame a creep into being perhaps not such a creep. Hasselbeck enjoyed using the word "allegations" and "bullying" quite a bit. Because no closeted legislator has ever bullied any gay person. Joy seems to be the most OK with Dick's movie. Because Joy's the cool one.

OK, done with the dreary shit: Let's talk about what you might actually enjoy looking at when you're hiding from the world:

* Obsessed. It's not that Beyonce movie. It's a new show on A&E about people with extreme anxiety disorders and the first episode features a gay guy in Palm Springs who's so germphobic that he lives in a pristine white sterile cube of a home. Then his female therapist comes over and tells him that not only is she going to leave her used tampon in his bathroom trash can, but that he has to touch the towel on which she just wiped her hands. Then he has to touch his own face. That's how they fix this thing. I'm in.

* Beautiful People is a new BBC sitcom airing on Logo, based on Simon Doonan's memoir about growing up gay in England, featuring musical numbers and occasionally funny moments and a boy named Kyle who refuses to answer to anything less than "Kylie." The fact that it's a sitcom about two extremely faggy 13-year-olds is enough to make it kind of fascinating, a push forward just because it exists. It could grow on me.

* Strong Men on the National Geographic Channel. In which the Pumphrey brothers -- apparently they make their living busting cement blocks with their heads -- go to Scotland to participate in the Highland Games with other refrigerator-shaped guys who eat anvils for breakfast. No, nothing gay about it. Until I watch it, that is.