To: Representative Nancy Elliott <nancy_elliott@elliott-controls.com>
Subject: Your comments on gay marriage

Dear Rep. Elliott,

Sex, whether between two men, two women, or a man and a woman, is not a dignified affair. Intercourse, of any sort, isn't like a night out at the opera house with top hats and monocles. Sex is simply two individuals getting naked and manipulating one another's genitals, in whatever fashion, for mutual pleasure. It is a hot, sweaty, messy process that involves wet flesh slapping together and the exchange of bodily fluids.

I do not intend such descriptions to be graphic, obscene, or offensive to moral sensibilities; these are just the facts of the matter. The point is that it is very easy to describe the act of sex -- any act of sex -- using specific, clinical, descriptive language in a way that makes it sound ridiculous and even disgusting.

You demonstrated this recently when you described the act of anal sex as "taking the penis of one man and putting in the rectum" and "wiggling it around in excrement". (I should point out that excrement is typically not a feature of anal intercourse, and should not be present if the act is performed correctly.)

Your choice to portray this act of sex by reducing it to a mere assortment of body parts was clearly intended to give the impression that two men making love is indecent and repulsive (and, by extension, so is the idea of two men simply being in a relationship). This is a dishonest and misleading tactic. Any kind of sex can be made to seem absurd by the use of vivid descriptions of genitals, motions, bodily fluids, and so forth. Indeed, the act of heterosexual vaginal intercourse sounds just as bizarre when it is described as "taking the penis of a man and pushing it up into the vulva and wiggling it around until he leaves a pool of sticky white goo sitting inside the vaginal canal".

Such intimate details of sex certainly have the power to disgust and offend people (though there is no reason that they should). But it is underhanded and deceptive for you to exploit this in order to portray gay people and their relationships as objects of disgust. It is even more indefensible that you would use this tactic in an attempt to justify rescinding gay couples' right to marry. Frankly, what goes on in their bedrooms is not your business or the state's business. Anal sex (sometimes described as "sodomy"), even between two men, is not against the law. And gay couples certainly aren't the only ones to engage in the act -- it is surprisingly common among heterosexuals.

If you are concerned about the impact that legal gay marriage could have on sexual education in elementary schools, your concerns are misplaced. If, for some reason, a school's curriculum included teaching students about "taking the penis of one man and putting in the rectum ... and wiggling it around in excrement" (again, an inaccurate description of the act), banning gay marriage would not prevent this. Rather, your concern should be about whether schools' sex education is age-appropriate. I expect you would be no less uncomfortable if a school were teaching fifth graders about "taking the penis of a man and pushing it up into the vulva and wiggling it around until he leaves a pool of sticky white goo sitting inside the vaginal canal".

If there is one thing you take away from this message, please understand that your personal distaste for how gay people have sex does not justify depriving them of their right to marry. Though a certain sexual act may not be something you enjoy, it is none of your concern whether others choose to engage in it. It is only the concern of those involved.