They've Lost Their Fucking Minds, Part 7 (Gay Marriage Edition):
One of the funnier running gags in the evangelicals’ endless comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Rapture, a farce in fifty acts, is the use of quotation marks around the word “marriage.” As in: “Vermont Becomes 4th State to Legalize Homosexual ‘Marriage.’” See if you get this joke, ‘cause it’s a riot: apparently, if you put it in quotation marks, it’s just a so-called marriage, not a real one, no matter what any court or legislature says. Ah, the sweet justice of snarkily-used punctuation.

These are dark times indeed for we members of the Family Research Council’s Super-Duper Prayer Team. The Rude Pundit joined the Super-Duper Prayer Team a couple of years ago under a nom de rude, and every week, he receives his pray jobs, a list of shit what is wrong that needs some holy intervention. Needless to say, at this point, things have gotten positively Job-like for a good prayer warrior. Some of us might even go late New Testament and ask why we have been forsaken.

Oh, come down from your cross already, says the suspiciously French-named Rev. Pierre Bynum, the National Prayer Director of the FRC, which is sort of like being Glenn Beck's spit-mopper. “The purpose of the weekly Prayer Targets is to facilitate ‘prayers of agreement’ that bear upon important national matters. When we pray over these Targets together, whether alone or in a prayer group of any size, we join the power not of just one or two, but of thousands of prayer warriors.”

You get that? It’s not that we expect our prayers to be answered. We just wanna be part of a big, prayer circle jerk.

So what do we pray about shit what’s already occurred? In the case of the Vermont legislature overriding the governor’s veto and allowing gay marriage (look, gang, no quotes), well, we’re pretty much gonna give the fuck up: “Give consolation, strength and courage to pro-family believers in Vermont. May other states take warning and secure marriage against usurpation by determined homosexual activists and judicial and legislative activists!” Now, you might think with a really big God on our side, we’d be able to pray up some smitin’ or levelin’ or at least a plague of scabies. Hell, couldn’t our really big God just snap his invisible fingers and make it all different. But remember: we’re not praying for God to change things. We’re not so results-oriented anymore.

Unless, you know, there’s still hope for something to change. Like in Iowa, where gay marriage will be legal until at least 2011, when a fantasy state constitutional amendment might take effect. Or in New Hampshire, where the same-sex marriage bill is currently awaiting passage in the Senate. There’s still an oh-so teetering chance, so let us pray, motherfucker, let us fucking pray: “May God move upon the New Hampshire Senate and Governor to do His will, which scripture makes absolutely clear, is not homosexual ‘marriage!’”

If the Rude Pundit could sit down with his fellow prayer warriors, he’d look ‘em straight in the eye and say, “PWs of the SDPT, it’s time to give it up on gay marriage. We lost. And frankly, we’re starting to look a little pathetic and clingy because the issue has brought us so much joy and power over the years.”

And he’d gently explain that history doesn’t go backwards. When you try to turn back the clock, you end up tearing the fabric of time and creating chaos. Like, you know, the Bush administration did.

Dear, sweet praying folk, it’s time to figure out a new reason to hate gay people. Perhaps we could go with how much better their lawns look than ours.