"Gay marriage bad for economy"

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to write about gay marriage again. Honestly, I don't care about it.

But then Rick Santorum came along and said another especially dumb thing.

Marriage, Santorum said, is not just about "a romantic relationship between two people."

"It's also about a unity of men and women, for the purposes of having and raising children, and giving the child their birthright, which is to be raised by their natural mother and natural father," he continued. "When we have less of that in America … then society struggles and suffers. Economically, it suffers."

Rick, Rick, Rick.

The economy? That's the victim du jour of gay marriage?

Okay, I'll play along. Fewer kids being "raised by their natural mother and natural father" means "society struggles and suffers" — that's the argument.

First off, what a great message for foster kids who fled domestic violence, huh? "Geez, kid, get back to your abusive father and battered mother: you're screwing up society!"

Second, how exactly does same-sex marriage take away from opposite-sex marriage?

What does your choice of a childless marriage have to do with mine to have 2.3 kids? What does your choice to have ten natural-born children have to do with mine to have none? What does your choice to marry your same-sex partner have to do with mine to stay single and adopt?

How does what happens in your home affect what happens in mine?

The majority of couples are still opposite-sex, still getting married and still raising kids, Rick. I would say the vast majority, but I only have anecdotal evidence. Still, it's pretty clear that the hordes of non-heterosexuals you seem to be convinced are waiting to destroy the country's demographics and economy just don't exist. Anyway, heterosexuals just don't seem to be that interested in adopting non-heterosexual lifestyles, for some reason. In fact, in my experience, people figure out what makes them happy and do that, no matter what their friends or relations or neighbors are doing.

Heterosexuals creating families will continue to be the norm. So what's the real problem?

Oh, the choices you don't like are hurting society? How? By putting Bad Thoughts into impressionable minds?

That's it, isn't it? You don't like the Bad Ideas being out there for everyone to see. If only we didn't show the Wrong Things, we'd be better off. Maybe then Johnny wouldn't even think about his feelings for Billy, and he'd go on to marry Susie instead. And then have a loveless marriage, with affairs on the side. Great example for the two kids they brought into the world.

More likely, though, Johnny would commit suicide. Whereas if he had lived and been free to find his own happiness, he might have founded one of those small businesses which your Republican brethren admire so much.

God, you despise the rest of us, don't you, Rick? You can't imagine our living moral, upright lives absent the suffocating strictures of your religion. Worse, you don't think my life is moral because I don't just not follow all your rules, I abhor the judgmentalism and smugness and prejudice that are inextricably a part of them.

Worst of all, you want to change the laws of this nation to enforce your narrow vision of what constitutes an acceptable life.

If you had a cogent argument to make that your way of life was objectively better than mine, I might listen. But of course, the sorriest part of your decades-long campaign to demonize not just non-heterosexuals but everyone else who doesn't subscribe to your world view is that you have failed abjectly and completely to demonstrate that your way of life is objectively better than anybody else's.

You've had years to make your case, and you've failed!

You have never been able to explain why your way is right for all of us and no one else's is. You have never been able to back up your position with anything resembling a compelling argument. Your rhetoric is essentially mired at the schoolboy level: "I'm right and you're wrong".

"It hurts the economy" is the trendy argument to make, even if you can't muster up a scintilla of cogent reasoning to back it up. It gets headlines. It sparks argument (including, I'm embarrassed to say, this post). But it's just one more steaming pile you pulled from your hindquarters to throw against the wall in the increasingly desperate hope of finding something that will stick. It won't, of course. Well, except to you. The stink of your pointless, asinine attempts to demonize what makes you feel icky will cling to you as long as your name is remembered, Rick.