(Reporter’s Note: Captain Hetero and I go way back. California, Maine, New Jersey – we’ve crossed paths before. I’m portrayed as his Arch-Nemesis in the papers, and have come to enjoy the creative latitudes of my villainous role. The following is my account of the events of Jan. 15, 2010, the night I stole Captain Hetero’s mask.)

As my previous efforts to infiltrate Captain Hetero’s rural Kentucky compound had failed, I spent the days immediately following the New Jersey Senate’s decision to deny marriage rights to its gay and lesbian citizens planning my attack. I knew that it would be at least a week before Captain Hetero’s return, as he usually spent the days immediately following such votes securing favors for obedient public officials and raising donations from local churches for his Wayback Foundation, the funding arm of his worldwide efforts to protect the “sanctity of marriage” from gays’ and lesbians’ demands for equal rights.

During these intervening days, I collected the provisions that I would need: Beggin’ Strips to appease the dogs, wirecutters and sunglasses to protect my eyes from the blinding stadium lights, a blow-up doll of Sarah Palin to distract the Captain’s notorious Dick Army, a Snuggie which, as everyone knows, can be used to temporarily subdue Captain Hetero, (yes, even he will succumb to the functional, comforting warmth of what is undoubtedly the gayest product ever advertised on late night TV). It was in this instant when I would do it, snatch the mask that gives him his strength and run for the altar in the Wayback Church, upon which the mask must be burned to completely obliterate every remnant of sanctity that heterosexual marriage yet retains.

In hindsight, it would have also been useful to bring some lighter fluid, as the matches that I’d brought wouldn’t stay lit long enough for the rubberized, Lone Ranger replica to catch. It wasn’t long before I could hear them coming, the guardians of millions of heterosexual marriages driven on by the barked directives of their master, who, without the mask, really did look like a steroid-enhanced Ronald Reagan. Once he saw me behind the altar, fidgeting frantically with the matches and his seemingly inflammable disguise, he ordered the Dick Army to halt and fall to bended knee before the Moment of Redemption.

“No redeeming me!” I shouted confidently, thinking that I’d finally gotten the rubber to catch. “The sanctity of marriage will soon be over!” I then burst into the customary maniacal villain laughter before continuing, “Won’t be long before Buddhist monks will be marrying gays and lesbians in the streets of Paducah, and you won’t be able to stop them!”

Unfortunately, I then realized that the fire had once again gone out, leaving only the acrid fumes of charred rubber to protect me from his advance, that slow, patronizing procession down the center aisle, clasping his hands behind his back and shaking his head like father knows best.

“Go home, young Hetero,” he finally spoke, “We are not after you. Give me the mask and you can go in liberty, the married father of three who’s given up his ridiculous crusades. Have you ever even been to New Jersey?  You don’t have to care. All that we have done is keep the fornicators where God wants them. Praise the Lord for all his blessings”

“No,” I interrupted with less conviction than before. “Sanctity and bigotry should not be interchangeable terms. You use marriage to control and divide, to make deviants of those guilty of no more than love, and to scare your brethren into clinging to their staid, zombified lives, telling them they have more to fear from gays and lesbians than from the banks and health insurers that are robbing them blind on a daily basis. I’ll never rule the universe with you!”

He stopped at the foot of the dais and peered into the rafters above, confidently aware that I’d run out of matches without getting the mask to light. When he finally lowered his eyes to me, he decided to call my bluff: “What if I throw in the Snuggie?”

“What?” I asked distractedly, scanning the church for avenues of escape.

“The Snuggie,” he answered, his eyes narrowing into bartering slivers. “If you go peacefully, I’ll see to it that all heterosexual males will be able to pull on a Snuggie without fear of scorn or derision from their heterosexual friends. That’s really all you want, isn’t it? It’s not in you to go the way of the martyr. Take the Snuggie and thank God for your good fortune.”

Though I’d like to end this story as the hero for once, the diehard crusader who managed to outwit Captain Hetero and his legions, who convinced a skeptical populace to abandon its fears and embrace the cause of justice for all, I cannot. After a short instant of appalled contemplation, seeing no route of escape, I accepted his offer and slammed the mask on the alter. Once again I had been foiled, proven to be inept. Still the bigotry would continue, marriages sanctified as instruments of tyranny over those who are denied it, legal rights withheld from those who deserve them.

So I took the villain’s way out, muttered “I’ll be back,” and retreated from the Hetero compound, making my way back toward the city from which I’d come in the cold winter night. I fretted over my mistakes for much of the way, but by the time I got home, I was more than ready to slip into my Snuggie and live to see another day.