Gay Marriage Stalks Toronto! [NEW IMPROVED HEAD is proud to announce that it has obtained the services of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. For his first assignment he is providing us with the results of his exhaustive investigation of one of the biggest Canadian news stories this week.]
Toronto, Ontario, June 12 – Tension reigns in Toronto as gay couples flock to City Hall to apply for marriage licences. Almost two dozen applied for licences in the two days following the Ontario Court of Appeal's ruling that civil marriage must be expanded to include marriages between people of the same sex. Can the city's delicate balance of competing value systems tolerate the shock from this frontal assault?
"I fear that if enough gay couples get married they'll find courage in numbers and rampage through the city setting fire to God-fearing Christians and stealing children for sacrifice in horrifying satanic rituals," said Dr. Barnard Hofstadter, head of the Toronto Centre for Sociosexual Studies, and a figment of my award-winning imagination. "Or is that Grey Cup crowds I'm thinking about?"
Dr. Wendy Wymeswold, head of the Canadian Centre for Dialectical Sexuality at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, observed that "the conflation of dialectically opposed sexual categories in the bourgeois institution of marriage imposes on social relations a hypertextual burden of unreconciled dipodies." I then pleasured Dr. Wymeswold with my enormous manhood and left her exhausted but ecstatic after being elevated to previously unexperienced planes of sexual existence.
At Canadian Broadcasting Corporation headquarters on Front Street, staff were reported to have sedated Rex Murphy and to be preparing him for re-education. Reports that Don Cherry and Ron McLean would tie the knot on the June 12 NHL Awards Show were pooh-poohed by the CBC's Head of Homosexual Programming, Fiona Hepplewhite. "Don and Ron are both married already, so it will take some time for their divorces to come through," she told me while slowly and provocatively removing her clothes.
At the Toronto Star office at 1 Yonge Street, columnist Michele Landsberg told me that the court decision was the result of a conspiracy by the U. S. government. "The decision raises too many questions that those in authority refuse to answer," she said. "For example, why did the U. S. government not scramble its jets to intercept this court decision? This is just another American attack on Canadian stability and world peace." I left her drinking sassafras tea and staring out her office window at the gaily painted tobacco kilns on the neighbouring farm.
At Canadian Television Network headquarters in deepest Scarborough, the gay marriage issue was overshadowed by the need to cover the opening of a new Magic City in the Peanut as well as Isabel Bassett's new hairstyle. "I wouldn't mind marrying you, though," said assignment editor Philip Tedesco as he appreciatively inspected my trim masculine form.
But what of the person in the street? Asked for his opinion of gay marriage, publisher emeritus John FitzGerald said "Is that supposed to be funny, Jack? Is that supposed to be freaking funny? Eh? Eh?" before waddling off. Actually he just walked by without stopping (something about being sorry) but I'm confident from the look of the old bastard that that's what he would have said if I'd been able to ask him. Applied metaphysician Kimberley Quattrocchi told me "Your aura is really unique. I think you could benefit from my special metaphysical massage. What do you say? Want to drop by the office, if you know what I mean? You don't have any objections to being massaged by a nude woman do you – big boy?"
So there you have it – Toronto, a city on tenterhooks as it awaits the inevitable explosion as gay couples besiege City Hall. No one knows for sure if Toronto can survive this latest attack on its prosperity and social stability, but one thing is for sure – I just told you as much about the implications of gay marriage as any of those schlemiels have who insist on restricting themselves to the facts.
Posted June 12, 2003
Gay Marriage Stalks Toronto! © Coolth, 2003
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