A Modest Proposal on Gay Marriage

For years now, the self-righteous wing of the Republican Party has insisted that allowing gays and lesbians to get married will cause all sorts of chaos, from earthquakes and volcanoes to, in the words of Bill Murray from Ghostbusters, "dogs and cats living together."

Well, same-sex marriage is now legal in five states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa and Connecticut) and the District of Columbia, and the world is still here. But the usual suspects keep shouting that allowing such weddings will doom us all, insisting that only men and women can get married because only men and women can reproduce.

Fine by me. Allow me to present a modest proposal to deal with this issue once and for all. If we're going to protect marriage, let's really protect it without all that mushy love business getting in the way. Since the right wing says marriage is only for making babies, let's treat it as such.

1. All couples who wish to get married must undergo fertility testing (at their own expense, of course) to see if they are mutually capable of making babies. If the test comes back negative, the marriage will be denied.
2. No one who tests as infertile will be allowed to get married.
3. No woman past the age of menopause will be allowed to get married.
4. All couples who test as fertile and still wish to get married must sign a sworn statement promising to produce a child within three years of the wedding date. All marriages of couples who do not produce a baby within three years will be annulled.
5. No divorce or annulment will be allowed for any reason other than the failure to produce a child.
   
6. All babies born in the third year must undergo DNA testing to make sure they really are the biological offspring of their parents and not merely "borrowed" to beat the deadline.
   
7. No one will be allowed to adopt who has not already made a baby the old-fashioned way.

I await the response of all those who insist that letting gays and lesbians marry will destroy civilization.