WASHINGTON, D.C. — “Well, if the president can turn on all those rainbow lights in front of the White House to support his agenda, then I think turning off all the lights in front of Congress to support our point of view is alright too,” Speaker of the House John Boehner told the press as he flipped the massive switch in front of the capital building to the “OFF” position, darkening the front of the building. Speaker Boehner was referencing the fact that last Friday after the Supreme Court ruled that marriage is a constitutional right that cannot be denied to anyone on the basis of their sexual orientation, the Obama administration lit up the front of the White House in rainbow-colored lights. The move was widely regarded as a dignified and modern gesture of support for the millions of Americans who secured a basic freedom that day, but many on the right were offended, even going so far as to draw comparisons between the White House lit up in a rainbow design, and an evangelical Christian president putting a religious display out in front of the White House.
Republican presidential hopeful and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s response in a campaign email was, “Just when you think the president has taken things as far as he can, he finds another way to take it one step further,” and on ABC’s This Week, he told the country “don’t complain” if he wins the election next year and decides to put a nativity scene on the lawn. Reached for further clarification, Huckabee told The Political Garbage Chute, “Separation of Church and State has nothing to do whatsoever with me putting a directly religious symbol in front of a government building, no matter what your hippie friends says or what the Constitution — and common sense — might imply.”
“The Dark Ages is where we want to take this country back to,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), another 2016 presidential hopeful, “so that’s why we think it’s good to just shut all the lights off and show America our true vision for this country.” Cruz went on to say he believes “true, red-blooded, God fearing, homophobic, ammo-hoarding patriots understand how important it is to remove all the steps toward equality we have taken, and instead wrench us all back to a time when belief in ancient religious texts could give us all the permission we need to harm other people in society.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) praised the move, saying that “light is so overrated” and “the Dark Ages are very misunderstood.” McConnell acknowledged what he called “certain inherent dangers for the citizens” in the Dark Ages, such as “famine, disease and poverty” but that the “enormous positive of no welfare state would outweigh any of that stuff.” The elder Kentuckian told reporters that fellow Kentucky Republican and presidential candidate Rand Paul “had a really great idea to not only turn the lights off, but to smash all the light bulbs as a literal stance against progress and modernity.”
“Yeah, I said that,” Paul would later tell the press. “Because as we all know, the Dark Ages was a time before Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare, women’s suffrage, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Affirmative Action, and gay marriage. So clearly it was superior to today, because all those things are definitely bad, unless of course you’re poor, elderly, a woman, a member of a minority group, or LGBT. In which case you aren’t going to vote for me or any other Republican anyway, so fuck you all, is kinda what I’m saying here. And while we’re at it, what’s up with this dead animal on my head I call my hair? AYN RAND HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!”
Not all the Republicans think the decision to darken the lights in front of the Congressional rotunda is a good thing. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) is opposed to the move, but only because he feels “it don’t go enough, dag nabbit!” Said Gohmert, “These high-fallutin, uppity gays have ruined my precious America by demanding they be treated like humans instead of like the vile, evil, Godless, amoral abominations my specific interpretation of archaic beliefs enshrined in texts written in a dead language and re-translated over and over to fit many political agendas tells me they are. So I think we should not only turn the lights off in Congress, I think we should take a damn wrecking ball to the whole building. Who needs Congress anyway?” When he was informed that without Congress he’d have no job and no paycheck, Gohmert simply snapped his fingers and disappeared into a cloud of pink smoke.
“The bottom line,” Boehner told reporters as he nipped from the flask in his jacket pocket, “is that we are offended by the Supreme Court’s decision to make gays human in America. We are offended that marriage no longer has any stigma attached to it if you are born attracted to your same gender. Despite there being no evidence that this in any way harms society, we feel it. We believe it. And if you try to tell us our wittle hurt feewings are hurt because we are ignorant, and usually deliberately and willfully so, we will call you the bigots for not respecting our attempt to hide and couch our bigotry in flowery legislative language and soaring rhetoric, but at the end of the day, we are just pissed off that we lost a battle in the culture war we should have given up a long time ago.
So instead of taking our ball and going home, I’m turning the lights off. Nobody’s home. Go petition some other government for your full compliment of civil liberties. We’re all done here. And I am sure that much like gun violence, health care, and the environment if we just ignore the demands of the LGBT community to be treated like human beings, the problem will solve itself. I mean, hey, all we had to wait about 50 years, and we were able to reverse all that work done for the African-American community in the 1960’s, so there’s hope for conservative Americans everywhere that we will be able to roll back time and progress and make this country great for a narrow subsect of a dying breed anyway. God Bless America, God Bless the Free Markets, and God Bless the Republican Party!”
