As youth is wasted on the young, is marriage wasted on the straight? They’ve had the opportunity to marry in this country since the Pilgrims stubbed their toes on Plymouth Rock. Straights have long taken ye olde marriage for granted, assuming it’s as much a part of their landscape as the Grand Canyon.

But in their hands, marriage has turned into something a whole lot less photogenic: a sinkhole.

Heavens, today in America the odds are better than 50 percent that a marriage will go belly up. All this energy and money and outrage straight people are pouring into stopping gay marriage could be directed far more usefully.

If these folks really want to protect marriage, they should take pragmatic steps to do just that, before straight marriage goes the way of sarsaparilla and stovepipe hats.

Why, you might ask, do I care if straight wedlock winds up on the endangered species list? Well, I might answer, I have loads of straight friends and family about whom I care. Plus, as my lesbian friend Lena likes to say, “If it wasn’t for straight people, we wouldn’t have gay babies.”

To business, then. First, celebrities should be forbidden from marriage.

Too often they treat it like illegal drugs: try it once, then move on to the next one. Mickey Rooney and Zsa Zsa Gabor never met a person they couldn’t marry. A shame they didn’t learn that sometimes shaking hands is just shaking hands. I can’t help feeling Elizabeth Taylor should be exempted, in light of her service against AIDS. No, we must be firm. Straight people have, with their wanton behavior, led marriage to the precipice, and now it’s up to all of us to save it.

The second step is to deal with those in the general population who, like celebrities, marry multiply. Let’s examine this. If your first marriage ends in divorce, well, people change. If your second marriage ends in divorce, um, we all make mistakes. If your third marriage implodes, it’s time to take a hard look at yourself. If your fourth marriage crashes, it’s time someone else took a hard look at you.

I advocate setting up a national institute for the study and treatment of the hopelessly marriage-minded. Here these people would be counseled and weaned from the notion that they should, or could, be married. Anybody with two divorces under his belt can go, but it will be mandatory for those with quadruple bust-ups. These people belong to science.

Also, the practice of bagging a trophy wife must end. Heterosexual men seeking to show off, grasp at their youth, or re-seed the earth by marrying their daughter’s roommate can forget it. The wife you want to dump, the one who raised your kids and stood by you during your insider trading trial, will be legally entitled to every penny you possess now or ever.

Marriage isn’t easy, but it seems like a lot of straight people expect it to be. To counteract this ignorance, anyone planning to marry must take a class called, “Wedding, Schwedding: Get the Facts.” And anybody who’s uttered the wedding vows but isn’t living up to them – from beating your partner to wearing the same socks four days in a row – will be jailed for felonious wedlock.

Open marriage isn’t itself a sin – unless only one of you thinks it’s open. If you’re a philanderer, you aren’t going to science or jail. Your creative punishment is to live opposite your orientation: you must live gay.

Harsh measures, yes. But clearly straight people can’t be trusted with marriage, so it’s up to us to guide them. These times might even call for some sort of Federal Marriage Amendment. Goodness knows I dislike messing with the Constitution, but marriage in this country has never been at greater risk.