Brace yourself, America: Hurricane Homo is headed this way and there ain't no stopping it. Like it or not, this country is about to get a whole lot gay, gay, gayer, and all I can say is: "Yeeha, it's about time!" After two years of having the Bushies tell us to shut up, eat another Happy Meal, drive a flag-plastered SUV and cheer while the bombs drop, a deluge of sequined, feather-boa queerness will be a welcome relief.

And let's not pussyfoot around: a hurricane it is. After the big "C'ya!" to sodomy laws, courtesy of Justice Kennedy and the Supremes, gay marriage is charging down from Canada like the Horseman of the Apocalypse (say the screechy conservatives), potty-mouthed Michael Savage got his gay-bashing butt kicked off TV, the queer "Fab Five" made their over-the-top debut, and the Episcopal church elected its first openly gay bishop, there ain't no doubt about it. Hallelujah, it's raining queers.

Don't know what the heck I'm talking about? Here's a Hurricane Homo weather chart.

First, in case you've been lost at sea for the past month and haven't heard, in a wildly pro-gay decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the nation's sodomy laws, laws that made gettin' your groove on with your partner a crime for gays in 13 states.

The government should stay the heck out of people's bedrooms, Justice Kennedy wrote, and about gays and lesbians he made this radical declaration: "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Not demean our existence? Hot damn, you can say that again. That means laws against gay marriage, gays in the military, and every other decree to keep them darned homos out are next on the chopping block. No wonder uptight conservatives are shaking in their wingtips -- poor dears.

Sorry, but after a lifetime of being told by conservative creeps that gays suck, deserve AIDS, and are criminals, sinners, child molesters, and biological errors that need Jesus, I'm all about petty revenge. Who am I kidding? I'm not sorry at all. Take that, feverish right-wingers: Your own Republican-dominated Supreme Court kicked your sorry asses to the curb.

Meanwhile, in a ruling that should make all of us stop thinking of our neighbor to the north as Bland-ada, Canada legalized same-sex marriage. Yep, while in the "land of the free" we cheered because we can no longer be arrested for making love, Canada left us in the dust and blessed homo-nuptials with the same rights granted straight couples.

Like the flying monkeys of the Wizard of Oz, queers from all over the U.S. are now descending on Canada to tie their knots, and soon will return to sue the pants off American institutions that refuse to recognize their marriages. Come back, my pretties, and sue! sue! sue!

But, oh, what a difference a border makes. Back here in the good ol' "You're either wid' us or agin' us" U.S.A., Republicans rushed to "protect traditional marriage" by endorsing a Constitutional amendment to prevent us marriage-license-seekin' queer freaks from walking down any aisles in this country.

Protect marriage? Puhlease. With a 50 percent divorce rate, rampant domestic violence, Las Vegas drive-through chapels, and I wanna-marry-a-really-rich-guy reality TV shows, there's no way gays could trash marriage the way straight people have. Honestly, after all straights have done, it's amazing homos want to play the newlywed game at all (well, aside from the gazillion civil rights and automatic respect married couples get.)

But Republican hand-wringers are right about one thing: gay marriage is a-coming fast, and not just from Canada. Thanks to a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Court, it may already be legal here by the time you read this. Get ready for a bride-bride, groom-groom media frenzy, fierce squawking from "Deliver Us From Sodom" religious crybabies, and George W., on cue, mumbling incoherently.

And that Constitutional amendment? Don't worry, changing the Constitution is much, much harder than, say, lying to the American public about non-existent weapons of mass destruction and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a questionable war. Even our current band of moralizing, puffed-up, blowhard Republicans won't be able to pull it off.

In other blowhard news, Michael Savage was booted off TV last month; his new show cancelled after a typical homophobic rant. Savage is a widely syndicated radio shock-jock, author of a national best-seller, and all around arch-conservative, immigrant-, women-, and gay-bashing menace.

To a gay caller on his new show he said: "Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it."

What's notable is not that Savage spewed anti-gay venom, but that he, too, got his butt soundly kicked and his show cancelled. Bashing gays, it seems, is not as fashionable today as it has been for Savage's counterparts, the ludicrously self-righteous Dr. Laura or the man who put the wind back in Wind-Bag, Rush Limbaugh. A big, fat, "Later, dude," to Savage and the sodomy laws he rode in on.

Next, among an impressive line-up of new queer shows, we come to Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in which five trendy gay guys, the Fab Five, remake real-life straight men into, well, better straight men. That can't be difficult, say the cynics among you. Nonsense. You'd be amazed at how hard and how funny remodeling wanna-be-hip heterosexual men can be.

While it's just a TV show, inasmuch that television both leads and follows culture, "Queer Eye" represents radical new ways of relating for straight and gay men. And for that alone, it's welcome.

And in a final stunning bit of news, the Episcopal Church welcomed Reverend Gene Robinson into the fold as its first openly gay bishop. Robinson eloquently defended his 13-year committed relationship with another man as a union blessed by God ("It's sacramental for me," he said) while conservative critics who prefer their homosexuals flaming ran for a stake, gasoline and a book of matches. In the end, fire was averted, and Robinson was voted in by a majority of Episcopal delegates, precipitating, one can only hope, a worldwide reckoning with the divinity of homosexuality after all.

From legalized whoopie, to homo weddings, to a TV gay-basher replaced by happy, ultra-gay men, to the world's first openly gay bishop, the queer storm has begun. And now, borrowing from the old Weather Girls' hit, I recommend you go out and let yourself get absolutely soaking wet.

About Patrick Letellier

Talk at the The Water Cooler