Dear Mormons

What do Mormons and gays have in common with exploding burmese pythons? Why, for that you must read on!

There were two noteworthy headlines in the paper this past week: "Mormons Tipped the Scales in Ban on Proposition 8". According to the New York Times, Mormons raised $5 million in a matter of days, right before the measure to outlaw gay marriage in California, thereby tipping the scales and defeating those sexual deviants by a hair!

In an equally explosive national moment, a Burmese python in Florida recently ingested an alligator, and then blew up. Biologists suspect the alligator may have chewed the python's stomach from the inside, causing it to burst.

So I don't want to rehash tired explanations for why gay people should have the same legal right as the rest of us. I don't want to remind the Mormons that church and state are meant to be separate in our country and that it serves them well that this is so. I don't want to remind the Mormons that not so long ago (and currently, in certain Fundamentalist polygamist quarters) they had a pretty funky take on marriage themselves, so it seems a bit rich to be getting so peppery over a union involving two people who just want a decent tax break and a committed monogamous partnership. I don't want to irk my Mormon readers by once again making fun of Mountain Dew, invoking the name of John Krakauer, and otherwise being saucy. I mean, I wouldn't want to seem intolerant. Because, you know, we all have our rights—as everyone reminds me whenever I get cheeky about theirs.

Except that some of us still don't have those rights. And the thing of it is, Mormons and everyone else against gay marriage, you are not going to win this war for long. Sooner or later when you try to swallow the alligator it will be too big and too aggressive and you will damage yourselves instead.

So, why not be smart and skip to the punch line? Let gay people get married. Letting them get married doesn't have to reflect on your own marriages, Mormons, just as Warren Jeffs and his child bride unions don't represent mainstream Mormon marriage—a point you are understandably eager to reiterate whenever the subject comes up. Saying yes to gay marriage doesn't make you deviant and queer and gay and stuff. Unless you're already gay and are just hiding it in your heterosexual church-ordained union. As one gay protester said, "We can't all marry Liza Minelli." The point is, you don't have to believe in gay marriage any more than I as an atheist believe in the angel of Moroni. Nor do you have to like it. But as Americans in search of tolerance yourselves, you have more in common with these other Americans than you think. "Momo" and "homo": see? You even rhyme with each other!

The bottom line, Mormon church, is that you're fighting a losing battle because California will eventually sanction gay marriage, and one day your children and/or their children will see nothing wrong with giving legal rights to all members of our society because my children and their children will be at school with yours. So, why not be pragmatic? Be the Christians who don't have to blow up over this issue. Be nice to the alligator, for he shall rise from the swamp again. And as we all know, it's never smart to bite off more than you can chew. p.s. On a chirpier note, go to the bloglet today for incredibly swanky and festive and cheap-ass Thanksgiving delights. It's recession-fabulous! (Gwyneth Paltrow, take note: if GOOP sourced me a set of letter-pressed funkalicious Thanksgiving place cards for $3, I'd be digging you too.)