What's Australian for Sour Grapes?

Brace yourselves everybody, Nick and Sarah Jensen, a super-Christian couple from Canberra (fun fact: it's the capital of Australia!) have announced that if the country legalizes same-sex marriage, they'll divorce. Sort of. They'll divorce like in a legal sense, but they still plan to live together, beget more kids and just generally carry on as normal except now when someone to asks them what their deal is, they'll launch into a rant about how everything was fine until the gays cocked it all up. 

Pictured: Just some of the billions of married people in the world,
which begs the question: why should we give a shit about Nick and Sarah?

They'll just plant themselves next to
the shrimp and wait for you to ask...

So, in many ways, they'll be the people you'll want to avoid talking to at a party. Seriously, nothing kills a party like a homophobic screed. Speaking of, here's what Nick had to say in the Canberra Times:

"Our view is that marriage is a fundamental order of creation. Part of God's human history. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman before a community in the sight of God. And the marriage of any couple is important to God regardless of whether the couple recognizes God's involvement or authority in it."

-Nick Jensen, victim of gay people

being all gay and shit

You hear that Australian gays? A straight couple might be forced to...well, not forced, choose. A straight couple might choose to get a divorce if you keep insisting on equal marriage rights. I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

"Huh? What? Sorry, we couldn't hear you over
the deafening sound of our hard won legal rights."

"We told you to check 'married filing
jointly' but no, you wouldn't listen.
Hope you enjoy the concept of shame..."

If you read his whole op-ed, he goes on to trot out the familiar horseshit about how marriage is a timeless and mysterious institution forged by God in the Beforetime and that's why it comes with tax breaks (because God apparently gives a shit about your 1040), but he's not vitriolic or angry. Here in the U.S. we're used to rabid foam crazy and rage and there's none of that here which I suppose is refreshing. As anti-gay rants go, his is pretty level-headed. Don't get me wrong, he and his wife are still being enormous asshats, they're just being somewhat more polite about it than say the Westboro people or Mike Huckabee and that Chic fil A thing. Wait, did I just say something nice about a pair of homophobes threatening a fake divorce if they don't get their way?

Yeah, I don't feel good about it either, but check out this response from Nick Jensen's brother. A self-described strong supporter of marriage equality, Soren Jensen defends his brother's right to voice his opinion and denounces the name calling and hatred on both sides as counter-productive. Which, ok, it is. 

"I disapprove of what you have to say, but I'll 
defend to the death your right to be a total wanker."

-Not actually Voltaire*

Above: Another marriage
ruined by gay people.

So we're left with the difficult choice of deciding where the people end and their medieval, bullshit opinions about what other people should and should not be allowed to do begins. Are Nick and his wife good people except for the whole hate-filled worldview thing? I mean, I'm sure they're great parents and love their dogs but they're argument is that gay people are so repellent and toxic that expanding the definition of marriage would forever taint it as an institution for everyone else. That's just shitty, isn't it?

I'm not saying the Jensens should be heckled or threatened or anything, but it's going to be hard not to call them a couple of ignorant fucknuckles. Yeah, it's how they talk there. Anyway, as per Australian law, the issue will now be decided by strapping Nick and Soren into bungee harnesses, giving them weapons and pitting them against each other under a sort of dome-like structure. Two men enter, one man shuts up and deals. Because Australia.

What? Oh, don't give me that look. I know two things about Australia:
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and rabbits, and I couldn't come up with a
way to work a rabbit joke into this one. Oh, three if you count fucknuckle.

*Well, obviously Voltaire didn't say 'wanker.' He was French and probably would have said something like wânquiérre. But it turns out the whole quote was bogus.