The Gospel According to Marc:  

I don’t shock easily. I’ve known gay priests, transgendered lesbians and straight hairdressers. I’ve had a man offer to show me his foreskin "restoration" over dinner, and once I even had a waiter who didn’t say "Enjoy!" But still I was surprised when I received a letter from a gay man firmly opposed to abortion.

You see, gay men don’t talk much about abortion. On the list of popular topics, I’d say gynecology ranks lower than baseball scores and auto repair. The only time that any of us think about making babies from scratch is when our lesbian friends ask us for sperm. And you can hardly call it an accidental pregnancy when you ejaculate into Tupperware. ("No, no, no, take this one. That’s the mayonnaise.")

But with civil rights in this country disappearing faster than carob brownies at a vegan potluck, we should all be worried about the future of a woman’s right to choose. It has more to do with queers than you think.

First the bad news:

Last year George Bush declared the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to be "National Sanctity of Human Life Day" in a proclamation that likened abortion to terrorism, saying: "On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life....Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life."

Then, in a step towards defining life as beginning at conception, he allowed states to extend health coverage to the "unborn child," but without (get this) extending full prenatal care to all pregnant women.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the unborn. I was unborn myself once. In fact, I think just about everybody I know was unborn at some point. But if the government decides life begins at conception, then the DMV is going to have a helluva time backdating all of our licenses. And as I hurtle towards middle age, I’m not interested in anything that makes me any older. What’s more, not only will we have to celebrate George Washington’s Birthday and George Washington’s Birthday Observed, but also The Day George Washington’s Mother Got Mounted at Mount Vernon.

The very idea of our government telling women what they can or cannot do with their own bodies smacks of Big Brother but, frankly, I’m even more worried about Little Brother—the President’s, that is.

Seems like every time I open up the paper, First Brother Jeb Bush is trying to turn the Sunshine State into the Unkind State.

This is the man who tried to appoint a guardian for a fetus to prevent an 88-pound mute, autistic rape victim with cerebral palsy and the mentally capacity of an infant from receiving an abortion. I’ve heard of politicians kissing babies to get elected, but this is too much.

Meanwhile 3,400 children in Florida wait in foster care to be adopted, several hundred of whom the Florida Department of Children and Families has lost track of.

My only hope is that the next Bush generation is too doped up on painkillers and booze to consider public office. (That’s right, in an effort to keep up with her cousins, the Coors Twins, Jeb’s daughter was arrested last year for forging a prescription for Xanax. I guess her HMO didn’t cover it.)

Clearly the Bush Brothers are more interested in protecting fetuses than children; but eventually the fetuses are going to wise up and realize it’s safer to remain in utero. (Come to think of it, maybe that’s where they’re keeping Dick Cheney.) I mean, why tough it out in the world when you’ve got womb service?

Where will it all lead?

Before you know it, activists from Operation Rescue will be forming human barriers in the dairy section to prevent consumers from buying eggs, holding up signs that say, "It’s a chicken, not a choice."

From there it’s only a matter of time before they’re protesting against homogenized milk because the caps says "Homo."

So why should gay men care about abortion rights? Because any government that makes decisions about a woman’s body certainly isn’t going to stop at making decisions about yours.

And that, my friends, is the Gospel According to Marc.