A really sensible middle-aged man would have refrained from ever holding pajama parties at his compound for 12-year-old boys. A moderately sensible man would have abandoned the practice after paying out millions of dollars to the parents of one of his little roommates. Only a very stupid or deluded 45-year-old male would have continued to let schoolboys near his duvet, as Jackson admitted was the case.

 Jackson will hire lawyers as good as a career-slide bank-balance can buy.  They are certain to deny the charges, but can also almost be guaranteed to argue that it will be impossible to find 12 Americans sufficiently ignorant of news and music to serve as jurors.  Outside observers will doubt whether - as in the Simpson case - it would be possible to find a dozen Angelenos willing, even if the evidence suggested guilt, to make a legend swap Neverland for cell.

So warped by his fame as a child that the only adult companions with whom he feels at ease are Elizabeth Taylor and a chimpanzee, the singer constructed a fantasy world in which a theme park could be a home and 45-year-old men could have 12-year-old friends for sleepovers.

If the allegations against Jackson prove true, there can be no excuse.  But his case would be very different from the classic parental nightmare of a seedy middle-aged man grooming children through the internet.  Permitted for four decades by money and fame to behave any way he wanted, Jackson has become a man so bizarre that there must be serious doubts about his fitness to stand trial.  A pre-trial plea bargain of insanity by virtue of celebrity might be legally unconventional, but it would be honest.

The time is now.  If you don't do something about this, then you cannot in twenty years -  when you see the American public disintegrating and you see our enemies overtaking us because we have no moral will - you remember that you did nothing.

1. Divorce
Somewhere between 43 percent and 50 percent of marriages end in divorce.  If you believe gay marriage is single-handedly eroding a sacred and ancient institution, you cannot possibly be pro-divorce.  That means any legislation passed in recent decades making divorce more readily available - from no-fault statutes to the decline of adultery prosecutions - should also be subject to bans, popular referendum, and constitutional amendment.

 

2. Circus Circus
In general, if there is blood in your body and you are over 18, you can get married, so long as you're not in love with your cousin. (Although even that's OK in some states). You can be married to someone you met at the breakfast buffet. Knowing her last name is optional. And you can be married by someone who was McOrdained on the Internet. So before you lobby to ban gay marriage, you might want to work to enact laws limiting the sheer frivolousness of straight marriage. You should be lobbying for an increase in minimum-age requirements, for mandatory counseling pre-marriage, and for statutory waiting periods before marriages (and divorces) can be permitted.

 

3. Birth Control
The dissenters in the Massachusetts decision are of the opinion that the only purpose of marriage is procreation.  They urge that a sound reason for discriminating against gay couples is that there is a legitimate state purpose in ensuring, promoting, and supporting an "optimal social structure for the bearing and raising of children."  If you're going to take the position that marriage exists solely to encourage begetting, you need to oppose childlessness by choice, birth control, living together, and marriage for the post-menopausal.  In fact, if you're really looking for "optimal" social structures for childrearing, you need to legislate against single parents, poor parents, two-career parents, alcoholic or sick parents, and parents who (like myself) are afraid of the Baby Einstein videos.

 

4. Misc.
Here's what's really undermining the sacredness of modern marriage: soap operas, wedding planning, longer work days, cuter secretaries, fights over money, reality TV, low-rise pants, mothers-in-law, boredom, Victoria's Secret catalogs, going to bed mad, the billable hour, that stubborn 7 pounds, the Wiggles, Internet chat rooms, and selfishness. In fact we should start amending the Constitution to deal with the Wiggles immediately.

The decision to make a marriage "sacred" does not belong to the state - if the state were in charge of mandating sacredness in matrimony, we'd have to pave over both Nevada and Jessica Simpson.  We make marriage sacred by choosing to treat it that way, one couple at a time.  We make marriage a joke by treating it like a two-week jungle safari.  There is no evidence that gay couples are any more inclined toward that latter course than supermodels, rock stars, or that poor spineless bald man on Who Wants to Marry My Dad?  There's good evidence that most of them will take the commitment very seriously, as do the rest of us.  There will be more "sanctity" in marriage when we recognize that people of all orientations can make sacred choices.  Good for Massachusetts for recognizing that truth.