America prides itself on its inclusiveness, or so I’ve been told. Fancying themselves inclusive and tolerant gives Americans a warm, fuzzy feeling inside — and without the use of chemicals to boot. Yet there remains a gaping hole in our touchy-feely web of togetherness, and though to point it out may risk the ire of those losing their warm internal fuzziness, it must be told upon the mountaintop: America will not begin to be an inclusive nation, nay, will not begin to atone for its laundry list of iniquities, nay, will not cease being the worst evil, blood-soaked, reparation-owing, fascist bigot-nation in the history of time and space until it chooses to recognize and tolerate marriage between a man and a magic rock.
“What you say?” one might say. Yes, some might even laugh at the suggestion, but so far from the mainstream is this overdue form of tolerance that it is still acceptable in some places for thinking people to actually hold different opinions on the issue.
Even “The Daily Show” — the television program chiefly notable for daring to impose on others its answer to the eternal, value-loaded question “What does the cow say?” — once dared to mock the idea of marriage between a man and a magic rock, going so far as to lump it together with, of all unimaginable things, leprechaun marriage.
True, most love between a man and a magic rock is closeted; you could go through life not acknowledging its existence if you wished. But it is there. Millions of people are secretly in this secret affair, not even counting the countless college men who experiment with magic rocks every year.
You need only put yourself in the place of forbidden lovers whom the government will not allow to apply for a special legal status and increased tax burden to understand the pain of the oppressed our society victimizes with its intolerance.
Alas, some may not have bothered to imagine themselves in the place of a magic rock in any context at all. For shame.
Of course, granting the man-magic rock unions the official status of holy matrimony does not wholly remedy the injustice our intolerance has perpetrated, but it is a good start. More will certainly be required: At the least, we will need to set aside special parking spaces, quotas at all levels of society and special observatory weeks or months for those men and magic rocks in groups historically wronged by our collective crime against them.
Then there is the important problem of providing children for man-magic rock families, as most magic rocks are not quite that magical. Nevertheless, we need not worry; that problem (and a whole host of others) can most likely be solved with little fuss later down the line by cloning children.
Let us also not forget, tolerance for marriage between a man and a magic rock could be just the first step in a crusade for recognizing all legitimate forms of marriage hitherto forbidden by the evil white oppressive male Western genocidal military-industrial socioeconomic imperialistic patriarchy.
Just think, even if you don’t care about man-magic rock union but want to further your own cause, winning the current fight for man-magic rock union may just prove to be the key to opening the door to all manner of worthy marriages, including cat-dog marriage and human-corporation marriage.
Finally, even though the campaign for man-magic rock marriage can gain from being described as a stepping stone to higher levels of marriage tolerance, it will and should lose support if we fail to make clear the despicable “marriages” that this increased tolerance cannot logically be said to progress toward.
Detractors will invent all manner of insane forms of “marriage” that our struggle should supposedly lead to after the traditional bounds of marriage have been broken down.
Thus true advocates of tolerance hoping for success must assail the almost laughable notion that tolerance for man-magic rock unions must ultimately result in tolerance for such truly ridiculous “marriages” as prime number marriage, marriage between a woman and a magic rock, marriage between a rock and a magic man, leprechaun marriage and human gay marriage.
Brooks Eubank is a senior in Calhoun College. His columns appear on alternate Wednesdays.