Phillipe and Jorge rushed to the home of our close pal and confidante Bishop Tommy Tobin last weekend with cold compresses and fistfuls of Valium in an effort to tend to our well-accessorized dogmatist in a time of trouble.
Governors from Gerber Baby DiPrete to The Missing Link to Laughing Boy not only attended church services the morning of their inaugurations but asked the head honcho of the diocese to crank out lengthy hosannas at their ceremonies. Incoming guv Linc Chafee did neither.
Tommy, poor boy, was all set to rock and roll: full honor dress laundered, starched, ironed, and draped over fur-covered hangers in the chifforobe; raiments galore ready to be lavished over the robes; sassy hat all blocked with points sharpened; and shoes brightly shined.
P+J explained that Linc thought it might be a nice idea to make a nod toward separation of church and state here in Catholic-Land lest we rekindle a debate about the sun revolving around the earth or vice versa, when we had more important fish and loaves to fry. We also went so far as to suggest that perhaps his version of The Big Sir was not exactly very high on the local celebrity A-list these days, coming in at best third in Little Rhody voting behind Pauly D and the NiRoPe brothers.
Despite that wise counsel, The Bish launched himself onto his other big bucking hobby horse of the moment, the gay marriage bill. Face flushed, The Bish repeated his attack on supporters in the legislature and Linc, arguing to P+J that joining same-sex partners in wedlock was "morally wrong and detrimental to the well-being of our state." (We must note that Tommy seems a bit oblivious to Phillipe and Jorge's sexual orientation, perhaps because we share so many similar tastes, such as wearing feather boas poolside no matter how hot it is and Sons of Hercules movies.)
Your superior correspondents reminded him that trotting out comments like "morally wrong" might not be the strongest argument available, given that his tribe is still having a hard time keeping their hands out of the Undaroos of the sons and daughters of their parishioners or identifying those who already went down that road. And when it comes to encouraging people in love to live happily together while the heterosexual divorce rate hereabouts tops 50 percent, we boldly suggested that perhaps The Bish might be a bit confused about what is "detrimental to the state" and what is not. However, given the lather he had worked himself up into by this point, logic and reason nor frozen daiquiris and chilled communion wine with grape Fizzies plopped into the chalice could bring down the temperature. So we decided not to ask him if treating women in the Catholic Church like second-class citizens among the all-male Disco Castel Gandolfo in-crowd might also be a bit misguided.
It finally took a little Liza Minnelli on the CD player, a hot oil massage, and the good fortune of a Monty Clift movie and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills episode shown back to back on the 52-inch, wall-mounted HD to make the tension evaporate sufficiently. As we departed, leaving him snoozing in the Barcalounger, we instructed Tommy's housekeeper to invoke the NDPC (No Drunk Phone Calls) rule until daybreak and to remove the "Send" button from his laptop, in case he decided on a flurry of e-mail outbursts to the media. Are P+J not our brother's keeper? (Well, we did pocket the Bish's Eddie Izzard Dress to Kill DVD as we went out the door, but us men have to get along somehow.)
