I Have Anal Sex. I Lick Assholes. I Suck Cock. Sometimes I Swallow.

Arthur points to the thing I hate most about Democrats: their indefatigable ability to drag out the lowliest fags-are-gross pandering while hiding lamely behind the old Clinton-era Republican canard that "it's not the sex, it's the lying." The watchword is "hypocrisy," a favorite of the Donkle, but the subtext is "icky," to use Arthur's well-chosen playgroundism.

Josh Marshall notes that RNC head Ken Mehlman, himself the butt-end, so to speak, of a lot of queer whispering, has taken money from a "gay porn king." He links unobjectionably to some industry-journal/trade-sheet documentation of the identity of The Porn King, and he also links unobjectionably to the corporate website for his company, Marina Pacific, "The Leader in Adult Video Distribution," which gives a perfectly adequate sampling of the adult videos in distribution.

But that doesn't quite drive home the point, so to speak, so Marshall links to several specific titles, which I can only presume he finds particularly chuckle-worthy or gross--or both.

From Harold Ford, Jr. to John Kerry to Jim Webb to Bill and Hillary Clinton to Bob Casey to Howard Dean--bref, every nationally important Democrat--we hear the same tale: We are the party of equality for homosexuals; but don't worry, because we believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and only a man and a woman. We object to "enshrining discrimination" in the Constitution, but we don't have a problem legislating it at a federal level and leaving the "activist judges" to the sorry task of taking the brunt of rightwing criticism for letting faggots kiss in churches.

I've laid out my own objections to gay marriage, and they remain. But calling them objections to "gay marriage" is inaccurate insofar as it is not gay marriage that I object to, but the entire institution of civil marriage, which establishes a needless class of special citizens who reap great benefits while the many other households, from extended, multigenerational families to working-class roommates, are inelgible for the same benefits even though they share relationships of commensurate mutual love, trust, or care.

That caveat aside, it remains the case that the establishment of a household in this country requires a civil marriage, and that when your lover is in critical care in the hospital and you seek access to his bedside, or you seek permission to make medical decisions for him, or perhaps you seek to end his suffering over the objections of his estranged, religious parents, there's no substitute in our society as currently constructed for holding up the left hand, pointing to the ring, and saying, "That is my husband." Democrats know this, and unlike me, Democrats aren't advocating for the abolition of civil marriage in favor of a more universal right to a recognized household.

But because they seek the votes of religious morons, and because they believe that even among the non-faithful, right-thinking people will abide fag hairdressers but not fag husbands kissing on the steps of city hall, when someone asks John Kerry or John Edwards or Joe Biden or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton, the answer is the same: We support equal rights for gays, but we don't believe in gay marriage. Then, on a good day, they'll talk about so-called civil unions.

The Democratic Party: The Party of Plessy v. Ferguson.

In the primary season before the 2000 elections, poor Dennis Kucinich, an honest and articulate leftist granted nothing but cruel mockery by a coporate media and political establishment that considered him a stupid, funny little man, principally because he advocated for actual changes in American policies, was one of only two Democratic candidates (the other was the equally "unelectable" Carol Mosely-Braun) to answer the question, "Do you believe in gay marriage?" with a straightforward, uncaveated, unequivocal, unembarrassed "Yes."

I emphasize that last adjective because gay questions elicit nothing from mainstream Democratic candidates so much as embarrassment and discomfort. They hem and haw. They to and fro. They dither. They avoid. Every queer knows that embarrassment intimately. We have felt it from our parents or our teachers or our friends. We feel it when we show up with a date at the office party and introduce him to coworkers. We feel it when we cease to be gay in the abstract and become actually, physically, really gay.

I'm sure Josh Marshall has plenty of gay friends, coworkers, and colleagues. I'm also sure that he thinks there's something very tawdry about Fire in the Hole and Flesh and Boners. I'm sure he never much considers that his gay male friends do those things. The nice young men in Washington-suit attire take off their ties and strip naked together. They press their hard cocks together. Someone gets on his hands and knees on the bed and someone massages his ass, spreads it, leans in, and licks around his asshole. Then he flips him over and feeds him his cock. Then he flips him back over and slips in a finger or two, or three, or four. Then he puts on the condom, squirts lube on his cock, rubs more into the waiting ass, lines up his hard dick and slides it in. They fuck. They come on each other.

That's what we do. And that's not a very graphic description. That's what Barney Frank does. That's what I do. That's what James McGreevey does. If Ken Mehlman is gay, that's what Ken Mehlman does.

It's not gross. It's sex.

The standard Democratic line is that they have to "frame" their policies on queers in rhetoric that obscures gross gayness from a disquieted Ordinary America, in order to win elections, in order to get power, in order to . . . The last is the great unaswerable, though lately it seems to be "in order to be marginally less objectionable than Republicans." But when Democrats acquire a congressional majority, queers will still get the short end of the stick, so to speak; marriage will still be "between a man and a woman." Ken Mehlman will still be not just a queer, but an icky queer who watches porn. Mark Foley will still be a "pedophile" who preys on "young boys," even though neither term is true or accurate. We will all still talk about something called the "sanctity of marriage." Pornography will still be an evil to be combatted.

In a healthy country, anyone can own Flesh and Boners. No one will talk about it because there's nothing to talk about. If it happens to come up, no one will care.

UPDATE: It appears that a number of younz have reached this post not because you're bowled by da rhymes I bust, but rather because you've been wasting precious billable hours googling "anal." Take it from me, your wife will not let you fuck her in the ass, no matter how many times you ask. In honor of your searching, in any event, here is a picture of the Brewer Twins.