NICE GOING ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, KENTUCKY, MICHIGAN, MISSISSIPPI, MONTANA, NORTH DAKOTA, OKLAHOMA, OHIO, UTAH AND OREGON: These 11 states have all lost jobs. They are all paying more for health care and for education. They are all dealing with environmental problems and sending young men and women to die in Iraq. But, yesterday the residents of these excellent and corn-focused states took a deep breath, contemplated the issues, looked their troubles square in the face -- and decided overwhelmingly to ban gay marriage.

I'm going to set the record straight now, once and for all. I'm not gay. I don't think the Torah permits gay activities. If I was king of the world, I'd get around eventually to preventing Jewish men from committing gay acts, but it wouldn't be my number one priority. For the most part though, I don't care. I'm not gay. My friends aren't gay. So I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Other Jews, though, seem to have it on the mind.

Did you know that ten rabbis in upstate New York came out publicly against a Jewish candidate who accepted an endorsement for a gay group? These Rabbis all live in a Hasidic community with real problems - poverty, and insufficient medical care chief among them. I can't imagine that gay marriage is rampant in their towns and neighborhoods, but this is the issue that animates them. Why? We don't work ourselves into lather when non-Jews sin in other ways. Non-Jews who steal don't bother us. So why do we care if non-Jews choose to sin in this way? Why does this sin, and this sin alone, bother us? Gay marriage is a distraction, a phony bluff. It keeps us from focusing on real issues.

Oh, and note to FOX news and the other pious media pinheads. Can we agree that "moral values" is code for "I hate gays?" It would make political discoursing so much simpler if we could agree on the terminology.