I dutifully sat through 85 minutes of C-SPAN’s live coverage of the Senate’s debate on same-sex marriage before my TV mysteriously clicked over to the French Open on ESPN. They were rebroadcasting the Martina Hingis-Kim Clijsters match from the day before, and I already knew the result — but it was a whole lot more thrilling than the cooked bullshit coming from our nation’s capital.

As far as I can tell, Senators Brownback and Inhofe are upset that more than half of Swedish and Norwegian children are born out of wedlock. Senator Brownback attributes this to same-sex marriage, and Senator Inhofe worries that “millions of them are going to end up on welfare.” As the U.S. recklessly pursues its unilateralist foreign policy, it’s nice to know that some Repbulicans care about those poor bastards trapped in the Swedish welfare state. Unless this means we have to add Sweden to the axis of evil. Freedom meatballs anyone?

Senator Santorum is still vexed about the Lawrence v. Texas decision and spent a lot of time quoting Scalia’s dissenting opinion which defends state laws against masturbation. Perhaps he’s taking cues from a certain Ms. Sandra Rodrigues of Utah who, according to the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, sat outside the Senate all week with a sign that read “Stop Same Sex Marriage: It Endorses Masturbation.” Even though Santorum faces a tough reelection battle in Pennsylvania, I’m glad he listens to people outside his home state who think that kids have entirely too much time on their hands.

I could go on and on with more highlights, but frankly, I’m a narcissistic gay man and not much of this debate was about me. As Michael Scherer points out, “if you listen closely, the leaders who oppose single-sex unions refuse to talk about gay people. They talk about activist judges, welfare rolls, the rights of voters and the birthrate of single mothers in Scandinavia. But there is not a gay man, a lesbian woman or a bisexual teenager in the mix.”

And also, I’ve already had my say. Along with Lisa Duggan, I’ve argued that the gay marriage debate ought really to be about the future of household security.