I’m on my way to the gym when I see the sign stuck in someone’s front yard, “YES! On Proposition 102. Marriage is between One Man and One Woman.”

It’s growing out of the dry grass, like a flower or a tree or a tumor. Who would plant hate in their front yard? Why is there a Proposition 102 anyway? Arizona already has a law stating that marriage is between a man and woman. Why would people want to put an exclamation point after this fact? Like: Gays Go Home…! as if 'Gays Go Home' wasn’t strong enough. This sign feels like someone trying to shame the gay community so that maybe we’ll go home, to the homeland, like, San Francisco or, I don’t know, Oz or L Island. (My friend Joan came up with that one.)

The house looks like it belongs to someone’s grandparents — you know that overgrown, paint-chipping, chipped pottery and chatchkies in the front yard kind of look? Like the people who live there are too old to water, clean, paint or see. They’re probably a sweet old couple, the kind that tuck $5 bills into birthday cards for their 30-something grandkids. The kind of couple who have worked their entire lives teaching or sewing or cashiering or driving. They both probably have soft white hair and flesh-colored hearing aids and smell like cookies shaped like gingerbread men (and women). His name is probably Joe, but when he does something stupid his wife, Erma, calls him, “Say-it-ain’t-so-Joe!” There’s cereal on the counter in the kitchen that Erma spilled last month, but neither one of them notice it and Joe is unable to fix things because he keeps forgetting that they are broken. Their grandchildren don’t visit as much as they used to and their collective social security checks barely pay their mortgage. Sometimes Joe rubs Erma’s feet when he’s feeling frisky, but Erma just falls asleep.

As I stare at this sign — “YES! Marriage is between One Man and One Woman” — I realize that Joe and Erma could never have planted this slogan in their front yard. There is no way that Erma and Joe, as they approach the last few years of their lives, would risk eternal damnation, being engulfed in flames and having Satan for a roommate because they couldn’t “love thy neighbor.” Someone must have played a cruel joke on this sweet couple. I feel bad for them, because I’m certain that Joe and Erma have no idea that this exclusionary mantra is going to buy them a one-way ticket to hell.

I’ll bet it was Erma’s grandson Norman who gave them the sign and said, “It’s for a good cause, Grandma, and you can put it in your front yard.” And Erma believed Norman because when she looked at the sign all her failing eyes saw was, “YES!” And YES with an exclamation point sounds like a good cause, doesn’t it? Something positive and hopeful, like when John Lennon looked into the little box that Yoko Ono had made and the only thing he saw was YES. This giant YES made John fall in love with Yoko because John Lennon knew that what we needed in the world was more YES. So Erma showed Joe the sign and asked, “What does it say after the YES! part?” But Joe couldn’t see either, and wanted to save face, be sturdy in this time of fear and misunderstanding and said, “Oh, it says, Yes! I Love My Neighbors! What a great sign! I’ll go and stick it in the front yard so our neighbors know how much we love them.”

I keep thinking that this is a sign for me to take action, not go to the gym and run on a treadmill for six miles like some privileged hamster training for an upcoming marathon — which I am. I need to save this made-up geriatric couple from getting a one-way ticket to hell! I pluck the sign from the lawn, place it under my arm allowing the dirt to cling to my flesh, and walk toward my car with a sense of hope. And when a 20-something man opens the front door of Erma and Joe’s house yelling, “Are you taking my sign?!” I confidently yell, “YES!”