As many of you know, Proposition 8 — a piece of legislation on the California ballot that sought to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman — passed recently, banning gay marriage in the state.The proposition has had a polarizing effect on the state with sides both adamantly for and adamantly opposed to gay marriage.They even both have snazzy mottos.The motto of the supporters of Prop 8 is “protect families, protect children.”Meanwhile the opposition to the proposition refers to it lovingly as “Proposition H8te.”The backlash from celebrities, as usual, was astounding.Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Lindsay Lohan, Drew Barrymore and Roseanne Barr have all spoken out for gay rights.  The most recent battle cry of the disenfranchised is the call to ban divorce.This opposition leans on the logic that divorce hurts children and families far more than gay marriage ever could. So to protect the sanctity of marriage, we should ban divorce.Well, I have my own modest proposal to present to you. I think we should take it a step further.Forget banning divorce, why not ban marriage altogether?Then we would all have equal rights. Our society would be equal under one collective ban.I’m not sure why no one has proposed this already.If you think about it, what does marriage really accomplish? Sure it provides two parents to children, the security of a nuclear family and a really fun party with a white dress and champagne — but in the grand scheme of things, isn’t marriage just an outdated, archaic ritual?When you attend a wedding, don’t you just think about how 60 percent of these blessed unions end in divorce?OK, maybe that’s just me.Anyway, it would cut down on the amount of wedding gifts and bridesmaid dresses I have to buy.And I think banning marriage would be incredibly romantic.Doing something illegally always lends an air of adventure. If a couple does decide to get married, they can meet a priest in a secret wood at night and whisper their vows as a friend keeps an eye out for secret police patrolling the streets. It’s like “Romeo and Juliet” meets “1984.”Or maybe we could cut this all off at the root and just ban sex. We don’t need it anymore. We have the technology to mix up children in test tubes. The procreation of children is no longer a necessary human action.Sexually transmitted diseases, debates about sex education, unwanted pregnancy and abortions would be a thing of the past. We would no longer have to be either socially conservative or socially liberal — everyone could just focus on the economy.To curb the frustrations of an entire society, we could establish a lottery where we beat to death one person a year. It would help us get out our more animalistic violent tendencies. The entire world would benefit. Productivity would increase.To accomplish the banning of sex we would also have to ban alcohol. We can’t have drunk people stumbling around making booty calls in this new regime. And the benefit is twofold. It would substantially cut down on all those drunk driving-related deaths.At this point, you’re all probably saying, “But Caitlyn, what about all the organized crime that prohibition will inevitably spawn?”To that, I say bring it.A return to the heyday of the mafia is exactly what this country needs.Besides, by the time that happens, Barack Obama will already have set up his citizen’s police to root them out.We would be one world, one people, equal in the eyes of the law. The oldest citizen and the youngest citizen, the strongest and the weakest, the smartest and the most idiotic — we would all be united in our misery.And while we’re at it, we should ban clowns, too.I don’t have any logic behind that one; I just really hate clowns.So we don’t need to ban divorce. If we just ban alcohol, it will take care of divorce, marriage, sex, STDs, abortion and violence by proxy.Oh, and we’ve got to do something about the clowns.With our dark past behind us, our country will finally be able to move forward without floppy shoes, free of fear of a custard pie attack.Now that’s change I can believe in.—-Contact Caitlyn Scott at [email protected]