If your ears are burning, it’s because people are talking about you. If the rest of your body is burning too, it’s because the religious right is turning you into the devil.

There are hot times ahead now that conservatives have gone public with their plan to demonize gay folk. A coalition of two-dozen groups aims to make gay marriage THE social issue of the 2004 election.

But look at the bright side: you’ll be able to toast marshmallows on your horns.

The Coalition to Protect Marriage, which includes such headliners as Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Christian Coalition, is being direct about its aims.

“We want to make sure that homosexual marriage is not legal in this country,” Concerned Women for America’s president Sandy Rios told the AP. “This is the very underpinning of civilization. If we remove those foundations, our entire civilization will come crumbling down.”

You hear that? Your wanting to get married, to announce publicly your devotion to that man and maybe get a little Tupperware into the bargain, will cause the whole country to slide into the sea.

Of all the social issues facing this country, gay marriage hardly seems the most pressing. How about health care? How about education? Nope, those issues are too complex and bloodless. Few will man the barricades over national SAT scores. But same-sex marriage provides a clear enemy, and the chance for the kind of hyperbole that will send people screaming with fear — into the voting booth.

Gay people come in all sexes, colors, ages, sizes and ethnicities, and yet at the moment we all look remarkably like Willie Horton.

Registering millions of voters is part of the coalition’s plan. If Iraq or the economy hasn’t inspired some people to register, the specter of Adam and Steve shoving wedding cake down each other’s gullets should do the job.

The coalition designated Oct. 12-18 as “Marriage Protection Week,” and got President Bush to sign a proclamation endorsing it. Donald Wildmon, Chairman of the American Family Association, declares on the “Week” web site that this “is our opportunity to defend and promote traditional marriage between a man and woman as the God-ordained building block of the family and bedrock of a civil society.”

In other words, he’s saying wake up and smell the sulfur. We conservative Christians claim the side of the angels. So you know whose side our opponents must be on!

Another prong in the plan is the “Marriage Protection Pledge,” which Family Research Council President Tony Perkins explained will go to every lawmaker at the state and federal levels. He wants each official to sign that he or she will uphold traditional marriage, and will dropkick not just gay marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships.

It would be fun to be a fly on the wall when that pledge lands in Barney Frank’s inbox.

During a coalition press conference, Perkins blamed “the black plague,” meaning black-robed judges, for monkeying with marriage, and now turns to legislators to set things right. As far right as he can get ‘em.

It’s hard to believe these people really do want to safeguard matrimony, since they’re going after gays, who can’t marry, and are leaving untouched the greatest threat to marriage, straight people. With a 50 percent divorce rate, it’s a wonder straights haven’t been banned from the institution altogether.

But they can’t build a war chest by pointing fingers at themselves and their followers. So they point at us. And we’re going to look pretty silly this Halloween when every one of us is done up as a devil.