This photo has been passed around on Facebook all day today. I don’t know who took it-if anyone does, let me know, so I can give the photographer proper credit-but I do know this: it’s absolutely terrifying. These women are the biggest threat facing our society today. Our entire nation is at risk because of these ladies and others like them.

Yes, I realize that one of them apparently uses a wheelchair for mobility, and that they appear to be old enough to be grandmothers, and that they are both smiling in such a way that makes you believe that they couldn’t even think about hurting another human being. I don’t know these women; all I know about them is that they are the first couple to have gotten married in New York under the state’s new marriage equality law. But that, my friends, is all we need to know.

If these women were sisters, the photo would be a beautiful testament to family love. If they were friends since kindergarten, having gotten each other through decades of hard times, we’d be applauding the duration of such a bond. If they were long-lost cousins, caregiver and patient, strangers even, this would be a lovely and touching photograph. But because they are wife and wife, the love you see here is deemed sinister, evil, WRONG, you liberal fucking hippies, don’t you know what this means?

The religious right would have you believe that these women pose some kind of threat to the sanctity of marriage. [I believe someone needs to buy Mr. Gingrinch, et al, a dictionary, because quite a few people seem to think that “sanctity of marriage” means “WHEEE! I get to do it with a whole bunch of ladies who aren’t my wife, as long as I make sure everyone knows that I think two boys doing it is icky.”] I can’t quite figure out what kind of threat Phyllis and Connie here pose to anyone. I’m not the first person to point out that if you don’t want to marry a gay person, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to attend a gay wedding, you don’t have to. If you want to scan the wedding announcements in the paper and give a derisive little snort every time you see a same-sex announcement, you have every right to do so, but I hope you snort hot coffee out your nose and onto your crotch, because you’re kind of a dick.

“It’s against god,” they say. Here’s a thought for ya: separation of church and state. We’re talking legal marriage rights here. Legal is the one with the courtroom. Religious is the one with the priests who like to diddle little boys. To recap: grown-up ladies marrying each other: bad. Grown-up men diddling little boys: good. Does that about cover it? If you want to believe in a god who thinks that starving babies and war and little boy-diddlers are cool but boys kissing boys is the ultimate in bad, bad, really really icky bad, knock yourself out, but that still has nothing to do with whether or not adults should have the LEGAL (say it with me, friends: leeee-gallll) right to get married.

Todd Snider, a popular folk singer/storyteller said it best: “Gay marriage is what scares people who don’t have shit-all else to worry about.”

Ain’t that the truth, friends.