It’s been a week since Brokeback Mountain didn’t win the Oscar for Best Picture, and I think I’m pretty happy about that. I don’t have any kind of agenda, I just prefer movies where the title pretty much sums up the plot. You know, like Three Men and a Baby, Ernest Goes to Camp, and Sorority Sluts Gone Wild. In spite of this Oscar upset, the success of Brokeback Mountain got me thinking about “alternative lifestyles,” and how mainstream they’ve become. Hell, crappy music from 1998 has a better claim on the word “alternative” than gayness.

Gay and cowboy is certainly an unexpected mix. Did Ang Lee just make a movie based on two random character traits he picked out of a hat? If he did, we might have had a movie about robotic surfers, or flatulent ninjas. And I think I speak for the movie-going public when I say, “Holy shit, now that would be an awesome movie.”

A few decades ago, homosexuality was something you had to conceal, and you better have done a good job of it. Lots of other minorities were persecuted as well, but if you were Black, or a woman, it wasn’t as easy to hide it. The closest the entertainment industry ever came to addressing sex orientation issues was a few choice slurs by Archie Bunker and a pair of weird-ass James Bond villains. Today, if you’re writing a TV show, it’s more a question of how many gay characters you can fit into one house. And if it’s a reality show, double that number.

I’ll never understand why everyone was afraid of gay people back then. I once read on the internet that when two guys kiss, they’re secretly pounding out plans of world domination on each other’s tongues, in Morse code. But even if this is true, and I kind of hope it’s not, Morse code wasn’t invented until the 1800’s. Gayness has been around since Ancient Greece. And I don’t need to tell you, it was prospering pretty well back then on its own.

My own attitude towards homosexuality is fairly typical: When I’m not demonstrating outside the White House, you’ll probably find me at a San Francisco bathhouse wearing a pair of assless leather chaps. In other words, homosexuality is not an issue to me, and I never really thought about it…until just now.

A pragmatic view of homosexuality is probably best. To that end, I actively encourage it. Take all the morality bullshit out of the equation and you’re left with simple mathematical probability. The more guys out there who are gay, the less competition for women there is for straight guys. Which means, if I see two dudes French kissing, there is a slightly higher chance of me fucking Natalie Portman. So have at it, boys! See if you can’t rope in a few more guys while you’re at it.

Lesbianism, on the other hand, works the opposite way. Therefore, it’s clearly a sin against nature and should be eliminated. Except in the context of porn, prison movies, and/or me-involving threesomes.

Gay marriage is legal here in Canada, and to the best of my knowledge, God has not rained boiling lava on us yet. If anything, this winter has been a little milder than usual. I don’t know if I can thank gay marriage for that. Some brands of lube probably contain ozone-depleting chemicals, so it’s entirely possible.

Mind you, it may be that God is just punishing us in other ways. Our hockey team didn’t even place at the Olympics, and who can we blame if not the gay community, and their God-offending antics? I’m serious about this. If I see you in my neighborhood in 2010, and you don’t have your hand down some girl’s shirt, I’m going to kick you in the face.

I’ll say one thing for gay people; they’ve certainly sorted out their civil rights priorities. Before gay marriage was even an issue, they struggled for the right to serve in the army and as Boy Scout troop leaders, and won. I guess if someone’s willing to die for his country, or teach kids to make a tent out of pine cones, the rest of us should overlook any peripheral sodomy that goes on.

And before that was an issue, gay people fought for the right to be included in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. I’m not saying the other issues are unimportant, but we’re talking about the right to march up 5th Avenue wearing green panties and a vest. This is absolutely critical to gay prosperity. But parade organizers were desperate to prevent the degradation of their solemn, green-beer-soaked occasion. So, they banned gay and lesbian people, who then started their own parades. And here’s where I think they went wrong. People don’t deserve a parade based on where they like to stick their penis. Like Justin, I would probably enjoy boning Rachel McAdams, but we don’t need a parade to advertise it. Or maybe we do. Fuck it, I don’t know Justin that well.

But now, gay marriage is the issue du jour. In case you weren’t aware, marriage itself is a largely meaningless tradition carried over from ancient times, when fathers could barter their daughters as a way of acquiring more goats. So, it’s insane for gay people to want to get married, but it’s even more insane that anybody else cares. Gay people would have to marry homicidal ostriches in my living room before anything in my life changed.

You know, in spite of what Pat Robertson’s team of super-geniuses might say, the Bible doesn’t really spend a lot of time talking about gay people and how evil they are. “Thou shalt not rub thine tongue against thy neighbor’s nutsack” didn’t even crack Charlton Heston’s top 50 commandments. To the religious zealots, I say this: If God truly wanted to discourage homosexuality, he would have given men impenetrable, razor-sharp assholes.

Essential New Word of the Week:

muffintop \’mUfIntap\ n: A thickset woman whose overhanging flab is produced and enhanced by a pair of too-tight jeans and a too-small top. I don’t think I can take credit for the origination of this word, as I have heard a friend use it. He claims not to remember where he heard it. Nevertheless, it’s amazingly useful. Muffintops are everywhere these days, straddling that line between provocative dressing and sweet-Jesus-my-eyes-are-burned. The whole belly-shirt phenomenon has been pretty good to us guys, so just think of muffintops as agents of karmic balance. If that helps.

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