This week our basic cable service is carrying a few days of Showtime to entice us to add this premium cable service. I have taken the opportunity to watch a few episodes of Penn and Teller's show B*LLSH*T (the show does not use asterisks). Much of the time the stage magicians put on a great show skewering some aspect of modern life or thought, such as a black academic at a university ranting about institutional racism at the school. Response "That's B*llsh*t!"

The other evening, though, they did a segment attacking right wing Christians, Protestant and Roman Catholic, who would limit marriage to a man and a woman. Penn and Teller brought out a couple of academics from obscure corners of academia to pontificate that there has never been a stable definition of marriage in human history. Now that is B*LLSH*T.

While there have been differences such as whether a man may have one wife or many, and whether concubines are allowed on the side, or whether divorce is permissible and if so under what circumstances, these academics did not cite a single example of a society recognizing marriage between two members of the same sex in past history.

Come on Penn and Teller, you are smart guys. Don't let your ideological agenda cause you to spew your own B*llsh*t.