On the way to Ash Wednesday mass, I was listening to the Rusty Humphries show on KVI, the local right wing talk station. There was a guest host, a White House correspondent whose name, great reporter that I am, I didn't wait around to hear. As been the fashion these days, the host was foaming about gay marriage. He made the usual clumsy slippery slope arguments, from polygamy to bestiality, but then hatched a new one. What if, the host postulated, a sadist and a masochist wanted to get married? Would we let them?

I'm no expert on all the marriage laws in this country, and I have no doubt kinky perversions like bondage are indeed forbidden in some sates, but I'm pretty damn sure there are no laws forbidding perverts from getting married to other perverts of the opposite sex. Still, like Justice Scalia's touching belief that there should be and are laws forbidding masturbation, it's a novel fantasy.