A GOP representative and nondenominational minister dismayed over challenges to his state's gay-marriage ban penned a pun-filled letter to his local paper criticizing what he perceives as the health hazards of gay male-on-male sex involving "a one-way alley meant only for the garbage truck to go down."

TPM yesterday flagged the story of Steve Hickey, who is a member of South Dakota Legislature and founding pastor of the Church at the Gate in Sioux Falls ("No connection to Church at the Gate, North Sioux City," the website warns). He's got some serious concerns about the gays—chiefly, that they and their leftist allies have intimidated doctors into not telling the scientific truth about homosexuality's physical ravages.

How does one right such an immense wrong? By getting the word out to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, circulation: several. "Sent this letter to the Editor off to the Argus Leader," Hickey wrote on his Facebook earlier this week. "We'll see if they reprint it. Kristen hates the title. You probably will too. Doubt they use it...."

Here is the entirety of Hickey's letter, with some emphasis and annotations added:

A One Way Alley for the Garbage Truck

Rep. Steve Hickey, District 9, Sioux Falls Consider this an open letter to the medical and psychological communities in South Dakota. The subject is homosexuality, which is about to be a front-page topic for the next few years in our state. I'm asking the doctors who practice in our state, is the science really settled on this issue or is it more the case that you feel silenced and intimidated? Certainly there are board-certified doctors in our state who will attest to what seems self-evident to so many: gay sex is not good for the body or mind. Pardon a crude comparison but regarding men with men, we are talking about a one-way alley meant only for the garbage truck to go down. Frankly, I'd question the judgment of doctor who says it's all fine.

Not for nothing, but have you ever asked a woman if she gets sore sometimes after vaginal sex, Steve? Just saying.

South Dakota docs, it's time for you to come out of the closet and give your professional opinion on this matter like you capably and responsibly do on all the others. Somehow the message we are presently getting from the medical community is that eating at McDonalds will kill us but the gay lifestyle has no side effects. Truth be told it seems self-evident the list of side effects would read far longer than anything we hear on a Cialis commercial.

Steve, do want some McDonald's and Cialis? Is that what this is about?

If many are indeed wearying of our religious community leading on these morality issues, and believe also those of us in the legislature should butt out too, it's time for the medical community in our state to be honest with us. If you don't speak up, this issue will be decided by five unelected judges on the Supreme Court regardless of what states like ours have decided by public vote.

Yes, doctors who I'm assuming will agree with me based on my extensive experience as a religious guy without a medical degree. If you don't do something to prevent it, the judiciary branch of the government may "butt in" (get it? get it?) to commit an act of legal interpretation, which is totally beyond the judiciary branch's mandate.

This indeed is a matter of being on the wrong side of history considering that historically, homosexuality has been a notable marker of the downfall of past civilizations, not their rise. It's not hate for a physician to speak up about something that is harmful to human health. It is not unloving to tell people you don't have to have sex with and marry someone to love and be loved by them. As one who performs marriages and counsels couples as part of my professional life, marriage is the last thing I'd recommend to someone who simply wants to be loved and legitimized. What do other health care and mental health professionals in our state really think?

Probably that marriage, which doctors have virtually nothing to do with, is a completely separate issue from the physiology of gay sex, which doctors have virtually nothing to do with? Just spitballing here.

The South Dakota High School Activities Association is presently considering changing the rules to accommodate transgender kids. Forty-one percent of those who struggle with Gender Dysphoria attempt suicide, that's twenty-five times the rate of the general population– certainly tragic and urgent but not a word from the medical and psychological communities? So really, we are letting our basketball coaches sort it out while ACLU lawyers look carefully over their shoulders!?

Hang on, I thought you were on about homosexuality. What's up with the transgender-phobia? Also, have you ever wondered what sorts of factors make trans people suicidal? Like, oh, say, living in an unwelcoming society that privileges "basketball coaches"? And why are the ACLU lawyers standing behind the coaches like that? Is it because they're gay and looking for a trip up the garbage truck's one-way street? Oh, I see, you brought things full circle there. Very clever, Steve.

Letting boys play girl sports is not the starting place to fix the suicide problem or the very real daily struggle these students face dealing with something they have been handed in life. Society is broken and people have broken identities. Is it really best for us to break down the one remaining thing that has been working in society to try to fix the broken in our midst? And does it really even do that, or does it merely put them in more places exposing them to additional painful ostracization all the while transferring serious anxieties to other innocent and impressionable ones in those locker rooms? We need to have compassion but there are unintended consequences to consider too.

Wait—so basketball is "the one remaining thing that has been working in society"? Or did you mean basketball coaching? It's all very confusing.

Before we let lawyers and judges decide this for our state and override the will of the people in the 2006 election, I issue a call to the medical and psychological communities and associations to weigh in publicly and timely on the matter of homosexuality and the human body, psyche and family, particular kids. [sic]

Actually, I think I agree with Steve here. It would be good to know publicly which doctors are concerned with the homosexuality of "particular kids."

The weird thing about all this is that Steve seems to be pretty hip to hot man-on-man action, as evinced by his church's sponsorship of an all-male tryst to discuss how "Manhood and Christlikeness are synonymous." He calls it Tailgate Jesus:

Why does Jesus need to be, uh, tailgated? Because, as Pastor Steve explains in his blog, "Too many men today are not following Christ very closely," if you know what he means. "They are letting many things cut in and get between them and the Lord."

Don't let anything get between Jesus and your manhood, men. Now, where were we on this homosexuality thing?

[Photo credit: Facebook]