Holy crap

We received a particularly outstanding letter in the office today. It's addressed to Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, and the return address reads: "(Miss) Petunia DeWitt / [Street Address] / (the trailer out back) / Falmouth, ME."

I'll allow the highlights to speak for themselves:

"God bless you and Representative Rich Cebra for your dedication to preventing homosexuals from pretending to be normal by getting marrie. I am not an intolerant person, but I understand that God's love extends only so far! And Maine's laws should not be used to cater to the wicked. As is, homosexuals can get hunting licenses, making a mockery of our state's wildlife -- imagine how shameful a buck shot by a homo must feel!"

"Truly, to judge the many children sired by you and Representative Cebra, you are using your 'members' in the service of God!"

"(I almost married a man whose similar dedication to confronting the homosexuals' vile agenda impressed me; had he not been ensnared in the devil's net and gotten arrested at the I-95 Kittery rest area returning from a late-night men's prayer meeting in Ogunquit, we might be happy, godly couple today. I did not believe his claim that he was simply "doing research" -- one does not have to actually engage in sodomy with a coked-up Portugese truck driver from New Bedford while dozens of other men watch while pleasurig themselves to know it's wrong wrong wrong!)

"And when Maine strayed from God's law in 1883 and allowed Negroes, redskin Indians, and Chinamen to marry normal people, look what happened: the volcano Krakatoa erupted, killing thousands and blanketing the earth in darkness for months! Again, I want to stress that I am NOT a bigot; I just don't think white people should dilute their God-given genetic heritage with people more closely related to monkeys. Obviously."

Okay, so here's the thing though: I was typing all this up, marvelling at the insanity, but when I got to the part about Brown and Cebra's members, I got up and marched into Jeff's office. 

"I think this has to be a joke," I said firmly, demostrating (I thought) my fine-tuned knack for knowing when my leg is being pulled. 

He looked at me like I had two heads. "You didn't think already?" And apprently he knew it was "brilliant parody" from the moment he read it. 

Which speaks to two things:

1) Yes, my gullibility / broken satire-meter.

2) But also, the vitriolic arguments of homophobes / gay-marriage opponents. Because while Miss DeWitt was ultimately too over-the-top to be believed, some of the stuff I heard up in Augusta, and that I read on message boards, isn't too far from the content of the fake letter. Take away a few of the really ridiculous details, and the sad truth is that the letter could have been real. 

(The street address on the envelope is that of Senate Republican Jerry Davis, who voted against the gay marriage bill in Maine. There is no indication of a trailer in his yard, according to Jeff, whose info comes from here.)