Let's Talk About Family Values
by Jeff Goode

copyright © 2005

(A SENATOR is speaking at a "town hall" meeting.)

SENATOR
Let’s talk about family values.

CITIZENS IN THE CROWD
Hear! Hear!

SENATOR
But first what we gotta do is define what we mean by "family".

CITIZEN #1
Well, when I think of family--

SENATOR
Shut up, you damn faggot.
A family is a man and a woman and one or more children. Who are married. The man and the woman, not the children. And living together.

CITIZEN #2
Senator, what about two men?

SENATOR
Not a family. Because they can’t be married.

CITIZEN #3
What about two women, one of whom marries a gay man for appearances, and he artificially inseminates one of the women, so they can have a daughter.

SENATOR
If he inseminates the one he’s married to, it’s a family. If he inseminates the other one. It’s not a family. He and his wife are a family. But the child is not part of any family.

CITIZEN #3
So a single mother and her children are not a family.

SENATOR
If they’re straight, yes. But not if she’s a lesbian.

CITIZEN #4
Senator, what about a lesbian who marries another lesbian in Belgium, then moves here to adopt a Chinese baby, which they will raise together, but it doesn’t work out, so they break up, since they were never married in the first place, and to make her mother happy, she gets remarried to a straight guy who she went to high school with. But they’re not having sex because she’s still secretly a lesbian, so when the Chinese daughter hits adolescence the husband starts having sex with her. And the mother finds out about it, but she doesn’t get a divorce, because she lost her job as an army recruiter when they found out she was a gay, so now she’s financially dependent on him to put a roof over their heads, while he’s fucking the daughter, and they all end up on Springer.

SENATOR
Yes, that is the very definition of the American Family, which we are fighting to preserve and protect the sanctity of here today. (And by the way, she can easily get that travesty annulled if she ever gets a job again.)

(SENATOR smiles as if he has solved a great dilemma. Lights fade to black.)