Author’s Note: This is a work of satire wherein characters may express disturbing views. Neither the author of this work nor The Fraser Post endorses such views. Refer to the implied thesis at the end of the article for the author’s intended message.

 

What, pray tell, are we to name this sort of union?

 

The occasion for a name arose a month ago this Tuesday when our elected representatives sent the Civil Marriage Act to the Senate. Next went our chamber of sober second thought in waving the Act through. So much for sobriety. The inevitable followed the rubber stamp of Royal Assent: on July 20, 2005, our country became the first of 191 to extend the definition of marriage to include same-sex and opposite-sex couples in equal measure.

 

Many a clever name had been suggested well before our venture into June. MP Roberta Kaplan took the floor upon the Act’s Second Reading, offering, “This morally sick union is worthy of a name no better than ‘unnatural inclination.’” She reasoned, “We must never allow these Adams and Eves to taint the sanctity of our tongues. These wretches want to hide their perpetration of the original sin behind semantic games because they know their couples are devoid of love.”

Michelle and Morgan Stark, now the first of such couples to be married under Canadian law, had a bone to pick regarding semantics, it seemed. “Marriage is the word,” Mr. Stark insisted in a viral post on his personal blog, Straight-Up Morgan, which has since amassed over 3,000 comments.

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“But what's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet. Whether or not MP Kaplan and her Liberal Party choose to label us ‘worthy’ does not take away from our inherent ability to love each other just as gay couples do.”

 

One week after the Act’s passage, the tide of concern is swelling, driven by Canadians who are only now beginning to realise just what they voted for. I invited three fellow Mississauga residents onto my July 21 episode of The Gay and Narrow to showcase our diverse opinions on the devastation that Canada’s straight epidemic has caused Canadian families.

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“I just need those conspirators to leave my babies alone,” Danielle Cathy, chair of Canada-based food chain Penguin-fil-A, told me. “This government’s teaching our children that straights exist. That was just the top of the slope. And now, they’re not even stopping all their straight teachers from talking about their so-called partners and their biological children for students to hear. One of these days, they’re going to try to give rights to males and white people!”

 

Her own schoolyard days, she recalled, were vastly different. “When I was a young girl, I held hands with guys, kissed guys, and promised a boyfriend we could live together with five dogs and a Ford F-150 if I couldn't find a wife by 30. All of us girls did. The guys did the same with us, of course.” 

 

And she’s right—these ideologies just take advantage of our innate attraction to things that are new and different. It’s really nothing more than “ooh, shiny.”

 

High schooler Anton Bryant, president of local association Canadian Youth Against Straights, spoke on how widely the straight ideology has been embraced among his peers. “I just don't like it when they make it their whole personality. Like, I don’t even care if you think you’re a straight. Just don’t hit on me,” he said. “And you can just tell. Girls in makeup? No girl wants a girl who should love women but then sets feminism back fifty years. Guys who put on that fake ‘straight voice’? The one so low-pitched it’s literally inaudible? No real man would touch that with a ten-foot pole. Actually, we low-key can’t hear it, anyway.” 

 

Anton went on to recount his trauma at the hands of the straight agenda in education. “The school board added William Shakespeare’s comedies to our English curriculum as an excuse to push straight unions. In math, they now teach ninth graders about linear equations. Ninth graders. Those poor babies. And every time I so much as try to walk to class in peace, they blast that guy’s song about kissing girls as a Christmas present underneath his tree—or whatever—over the announcements. Even in November.” 

 

It’s not just about brainwashing high schoolers, either—they wouldn’t stop playing that blasted song when I took my youngest holiday shopping at Square One. She was a month old. It’s like they’re specifically out to turn our babies when they’re the most vulnerable. Man, all I want for Christmas is for Mario Carey to shut his trap.

 

My final guest, conversion therapist Dr. John K. Rowling, cited his twenty years of experience in the field of lobotomy as the source of his scientific perspective. “According to Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Sexuality, ninety-seven percent of heterosexuals were dropped on their heads during the latency stage of development. As far as environmental factors go, it’s rooted in their desire to belong to a special in-group. Ninety-nine percent of heterosexuals are the way they are because they had no friends growing up and are therefore starved for affection. They latch onto the first person they meet who gives them the time of day, even when both inherent and societal disparities in power between the genders make such a liaison ill-advised.”

 

Regarding the sustainability of heterosexuality, Dr. Rowling further informed us, “Ninety-five percent of prominent researchers in my field know this unnatural method of procreation is no match for our cutting-edge IVF technology. This epidemic threatens to overpopulate us into ruin if it succeeds in establishing fornication as a universal law. Following this principle, even the most basic units of life have evolved to reproduce by other means,” he said, earning nods from Ms. Cathy and Mr. Bryant alike. “Have we collectively forgotten about mitosis?” 

 

Dr. Rowling was tragically found dead in his bedroom last Saturday, having sustained a single gunshot wound to the mouth. His death comes amidst civil proceedings concerning the nature of his private interactions with select underage clients. The perpetrator remains at large.

 

But after all those enlightening interviews, I’ve realised my name of choice for straight unions comes courtesy of my bosom friend Frederica Phelps, founder of the lovely Eastboro Baptist Church. On Eastboro’s website, Frederica offers, in three sentences, their core values: “Fire and brimstone upon you all. It’s the Bible, not the straightble. The original sin is heterosexuality (Genesis 1:1), which is why God sent teen pregnancies to punish us all (Genesis 1:2).” Underneath, she captions a picture of Mr. Stark’s blog post with, “Of course they’re quoting r*meo and j*liet. Heteros choosing to foist their twisted fantasies upon our children yet again. Shakespeare. Epstein. Nabokov. Every last one of you. You’re all one and the same. I’ll name your ideology SEXUAL PERVERSION IN THE FIRST DEGREE.” 

 

Now, even in the face of such brave declarations, the asleep mind virus is hell-bent on labelling our truth-telling “heterophobia.” That is nothing but an ad hominem, anyway. Why would we be scared of a [redacted]? 

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(Let’s just hope Big Asleep doesn’t take this down.)

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Implied Thesis: Much of homophobic rhetoric promotes harm to LGBTQ+ people using double standards and can be inverted to criticise heterosexuality. Recognising both the lack of justification for promoting harm in this way and how the same reasoning could be used against them can lead otherwise indifferent people to stop tolerating homophobic rhetoric and instead call it out.