Written by Zepp Jamieson   

It's the end of the world as we know it...

It's chaos out there.

First, there was the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Walker ruling that found Prop 8 was unconstitutional. The populace of California, many of whom graduated from the eighth grade, did not have the right to deny legal rights to select parts of the Constitution.

I immediately ran over to the County Courthouse, and found thousands of married couples lining up to file for divorce. No surprise there, of course. This is, after all, California. But the crowd seemed more agitated than usual.

I spoke to one beefy looking lumberjack sort who was towing a sweet little eighteen year old thing while crying convulsively and wiping snot off on his flannel sleeve.

"Wrong team won the Superbowl?" I asked, cautiously.

"N-n-no! I won $50 bucks on that. It's this faggot marriage thing!"

"Um, the Prop 8 ruling."

"Whatever number it was. It's wrong, just wrong. The bible sez so!"

"So why are you here?"

"Giting a dee-vorce!" I looked at his wife, who shrugged and gave me a fuzzy smile. Oxycontin is still popular in these parts.

"Divorce, eh? And does this have something to do with Prop 8?"

"Them faggots marryin'? You bet it does. Now that they can marry, it's ruined it for guys like me!"

"How so?"

"Well, ever' time ah looks at my wife, and turn off the light and pull her close, whut I sees in my minds eye is the big hairy ass of some dirty trucker!"

"You see a … trucker's ass?"

"Yeah. You know. A bear. Big and strong, but nice and sweet. A Gentle Ben."

"And that ruins it for you?"

The lumberjack eyed me suspiciously. "Well, of COURSE! Do I look like a faggot to you?"

I decided it was time to elbow my way into the courthouse and see how the authorities were dealing with it. I spotted a municipal judge.

"Excuse me, judge?"

He peered at me sharply. "I remember you. 'I was speeding because I wanted to get to the gas station before I ran out of gas', right?"

"Um, my twin brother. We've never met. Judge, what's going on here?"

"You never met your twin brother? Just as well, really. He's a bad driver. What's going on here is that all these people have decided that letting gays get married has destroyed the institution, and they are getting divorced to protest."

"That doesn't make any sense."

He shrugged. "They're members of a party but professional ethics prevent me from discussing which political party it is."

"Ah. I might be able to guess. Say, Judge, how would you like to do California a favor?"

"What's that?"

"Could you rule that gays have the right to vote? Maybe these guys will think that's ruined voting for them."

The judge pulled his head back, considering. Then he grinned. "A bit hard to work that into a failure-to-appear case, but I'll see what I can do."

Next stop was the local Santorum Campaign headquarters. It was pretty easy to spot, with the big tall red banners with the black cross in the white circle on each one. I walked past the slogans "One God, One Land, One Mind" and "Faith is more powerful than Knowledge" and into the main hall, where dozens of secretaries were stuffing envelopes and making phone calls. I figured they would be pretty upset about Prop 8, but instead they were celebrating Santorum's stunning upset wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. I wasn't quite sure how being slightly preferred by the 5% of eligible voters who bothered to vote translated to a vast populist wave, especially when your opponents are a vapid plutocrat, a disagreeable washed-up demagogue, and a crackpot who hangs around with Nazis, but in politics, you take victories where you can find them. Hitler, after all, parlayed getting 31% of the popular vote into an iron dictatorship that killed tens of millions of people, so winning three Republican primaries had to be worth at least a small genocide.

Genocide was definitely on the minds of the Santorum people. Many of the desks had glass jars about 14" tall on them, tightly sealed. I peered into the nearest one. "Is that a human embryo?" I asked.

"Yes, that's Sally! She's our youngest, and we're very proud of her. She's so well behaved."

"I'm sure she has a great future. But why is she here? And why do all these other people have jars on their desks?"

"Oh, it's 'Bring-Your-Children-To-Work' Day. She pointed over to the next desk, which had about a dozen jars on it. "She's Catholic, you know" she whispered.

I didn't know, and didn't particularly want to know.

"So what's next for the Santorum campaign?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"Well, I'm a reporter. It's the sort of question reporters ask."

She pressed a button on the side of her desk, and moments later I was being escorted, feet two inches off the ground, out of the building. The not-so Gentle Bens tossed me into the street. I dusted myself off, noting that my phone and recorder had gone missing, and cursed my stupidity. Never admit to a Republican that you are with the press. They get really violent, sometimes.

That left one last stop before I called it a day.

To my surprise, the local Church of the Latter-Day Saints was closed. There was a sign on the door. "We're remodeling. Go bug the Baptists."

Instead, I went and bought a house. Lucky for me, California had just reached an agreement with the banks that anyone who wanted a house could get one, and the banks would pay. At least, that's what the guy in the dark glasses and robe told me, and he gave me a "fixer upper", a place that had been foreclosed six months ago. I only had to pay him a $2,500 deposit, in cash since his ATM was broken. He hook a thumb at the "Property Foreclosed, Bank Property. Keep Out". "I'll send someone around tomorrow to remove that."

So, all in all, a good day.

Unless, of course, you are Mitt Romney or have a pathological fear of Gentle Ben.



© Bryan Zepp Jamieson