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"Tell us a story, Grandpa Santorum," several of the children said together. It was cold, and from the front of the concrete bunker, there was a low whistle as the wind pushed through the gaps around the old wooden door. "Tell us a story again, from the before-times."
Grandpa Santorum smiled a grizzled smile. The children knew he loved to tell stories; the old man knew they liked hearing them. "Oh, I don't know," he answered. "There are so many stories from those times. But I think I've already told you every story worth telling. I'm not sure how many more stories there are."

The children protested loudly. "Tell us what it was like!" said a small girl in a flower-print dress. "Tell us about the freedoms!" a bony young man exclaimed.

Grandpa smiled again. He would tease them about the stories, but he would never really deny them one. "Well," he started out. "What was it like, in the before-times? Why, I remember it as if it was yesterday. Oh, the way the sun would shine, in those days before The Obama, The Destroyer of All Things." (Here the children squealed at mention of The Destroyer, as they always did.) "The way people would laugh, and sing! It was not at all like these dark days." He leaned back in the tattered old chair, settling into the rhythm of his speech. "But what was it really like? I think it all boils down to one thing. In those days, men were free."
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"And the gays. That's when it all came crashing down. The very slightly improved health insurance regulations, that was one thing, and the womenfolk getting all pissed off and demanding this and that, but it was nothing compared to the gay folk. Once we started giving them freedoms too, it was all over."

"Whoa," the children murmured appreciatively. "What happened then?" asked little Sally.

"Well you see, the more freedom we started giving the gays, the more freedom we were taking from other folks, same as every other time. We started taking freedom away from good churchgoing folks, by letting the gay people just say they were gay, with no shame at all. We started taking freedom away from people who hated gay people, because suddenly if you thought being gay was an abomination unto the Lord, maybe somebody else would object to you saying it, and then how would you feel? How outrageous." He was beginning to getting worked up now.

"Then all Hell broke loose. They started letting gay folks get married. Same legal rights, even the same word, and we all know that the word of something is pretty much the only thing that matters. Can you imagine what happened next? Now why would a man get married to a woman if they could choose to just skip all that and marry another man? It was a mess. Why, I'm ashamed to say I myself turned gay for about 10 years, after that. Don't know how it happened exactly, but the minute they started having gay weddings, it was like the Devil himself was egging me into that beautiful white dress.

"essir, everybody was getting freedoms. Everybody but the white Christian men anyway, you know, the ones of the right evangelical persuasion and political inclinations and all that. It was their God-given right to be gigantic assholes to everybody else, but slowly and surely, they started taking those rights away. Well, of course, you could still be an asshole to people, sure, but other people wouldn't listen as much. They wouldn't necessarily just do what you say. And when your whole freedom relies on telling other people what they should do, but you give the other people freedom to not listen to you, what do you really have? A whole lotta nothin', that's what. They might have their freedom. But you don't have yours."

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