Georgia GOP Chairwoman Sue Everhart has been the subject of a lot of
Internet hate and ridicule for suggesting that marriage equality will
open up a new avenue for straight fraudsters to
cheat the rest
of us by entering into sham marriages to get their hands on the
massive, taxpayer funded benefits that the institution of marriage
provides.
But really the only problem I see with Everhart's statement is just that it doesn't go far enough.
In fact I have it on good authority that thousands, perhaps even
millions, of currently-married couples are in fact only pretending to
love each other. By living together, under the same roof, and engaging
in activities such as furniture-shopping, child-rearing, having other
couples over for dinner, eating in front of the TV whilst watching Mad
Men, and even sleeping together in the same bed, these frauds perpetuate
the image of being married when in fact, the love they profess to each
other through the sacred and immortal institution of marital bliss is
only a show. Once the surface of these faux marriages is scratched,
the emotional reality is found to be something quite different--usually
because SOMEONE can't be BOTHERED to pick a dirty sock off the bedroom
floor, or clean their hair out of the drain after showering.
So let me propose (modestly) a solution to this problem. Using the powers of federal government as enumerated in the
2002 Homeland Security Act,
we need to create a new cadre of dedicated, highly trained Marriage
Inspectors, shouldered with the awesome responsibility of Defending the
Institution of Marriage. These inspectors will form an elite MarriCorps
who will fan out over the highways and byways of the country, making
sure that these desperate criminals and their nefarious plans to defraud
the country of its rightful tax revenues by filing jointly are exposed
and stopped for once and all.
Now, the question of just how MarriCorps officers will do this is an
interesting one. Clearly, they must be trained to understand what
marriage is, and what it isn't. They should therefore have an
encyclopedic knowledge of Disney films, Leave It To Beaver episodes, and
Norman Rockwell paintings, as I'm sure you would agree that those
resources provide the clearest idea of what the Institution of Marriage
ought to look like. They should also be highly trained in a variety of
enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, which, as
every knows, is the only effective way of getting married couples to
admit their actual feelings about each other.
Still, how to know, for certain, whether a couple really is married
or is just pretending to be in order to be able to use each other's
library cards? The answer is really quite simple. Inspection must of
course be surprise, otherwise people will "game the system." Married
couples will be interrogated separately, in separate rooms with no
possibility of collusion.
The MarriCorps officer will first ask one of the so-called "married
persons" a series of questions and carefully write down their answers.
Then, the same questions will be asked of the other potential
marriage-scofflaw, but he or she will be asked to provide as an answer,
not what he or she thinks, but what he or she thinks his partner
answered.
Some sample questions could include:
1. What is the strangest place you've made whoopie?
2. How would you rate your [wife|husband]'s morning breath?
3. If your spouse was a [cartoon character|superhero|type of sushi] what would they be?
4. Really, what is the strangest place you've made whoopie (and don't say "in the butt" this time)?
By this simple and empirically sound method, I have every confidence
that our brave MarriCorps officers could quickly and easily sort out the
real married couples from the pretenders. Thereby giving really married
people a renewed confidence in their marriage that can only come from
governmental approval.
As for the ones who get caught faking it--their punishment will be
that they must remain married to each other for the rest of their lives.
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