A few hours ago I dropped a friend off at the airport. She is now winging her way across the country to join her loved ones in a succession of family events: a memorial service, a wedding shower and a graduation. All this is slated to take place in Massachusetts.

Good thing it’s still there. No, Massachusetts has not fallen into the ocean, two weeks after same-sex couples began marrying within its borders. No plagues of locusts have been reported in Worcester; no swarms of frogs have descended on New Bedford. God hasn’t responded with wrath, and human beings haven’t fallen to pieces, either. The wheels of state government continue to squeak along. Straight people aren’t ripping up their marriage licenses and heading to the town common for an orgy.

Though it’s hard to tune out all that fear opponents of gay marriage whip up, folks might’ve realized Armageddon wasn’t in the cards by checking out those places where gays already had the right to marry.

The Netherlands, for instance. Three years ago, the Dutch were the first to let homos get hitched. The tulips still flower. The windmills still turn. The hookers still sit in the windows overlooking the Amsterdam canals. Holland continues to turn out Edam and Gouda and speed skaters and even the occasional Christian.

Then there’s Belgium. The country keeps producing beer, lace, and – I know because I’ve tested it thoroughly – the finest chocolate on the planet. In addition to having given gays marriage rights, Belgium is best known these days for its two top-ranked female tennis players. Both of them have chosen to marry men. Nothing’s perfect.

Three Canadian provinces have granted gay wedlock. British Columbia still hosts oodles of tourists, the CN Tower still stands in Ontario, and the Quebecois are feeling sufficiently sanguine that nobody has mentioned secession for a full 10 minutes.

When gays marry, divine retribution and the collapse of civil authority don’t follow. How boring.

Nope, the drama attached to Massachusetts is fairly basic: budding lawsuits and uncomfortable feelings. Folks opposed to same-sex marriage, and even some allies, have to cope with the icky feeling they get when watching two homosexuals kiss. The more excitable have to cope with their anger that the Bay State is treating gays like … people!

They aren’t the only ones in a fog of disbelief. Some gays need shock absorbers to take in the fact this has really happened. One Massachusetts lesbian said after receiving a marriage license, “It’s real, but it’s almost too good to be true.”

In time we’ll all get our minds around the change. Which is what worries the religious right, so they’re cranking up the fear machine for the next round. On the day gays began marrying in the Commonwealth, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released a statement in which he warned that America is about to shoot itself in the foot, and then set the foot on fire.

“The so-called ‘gay agenda’ is far-reaching, and it encompasses much more than the fight for marriage rights. If we do not immediately pass a constitutional amendment protecting marriage, we will not only lose the institution of marriage in our nation, but eventually all critics of the homosexual lifestyle will be silenced. Churches will be muted, schools will be forced to promote homosexuality … and our nation will find itself embroiled in a cultural, legal and moral quagmire.”

Heavens! Maybe I was wrong about God’s reaction. Maybe the cicadas flying clunkily around the East Coast are God’s modern plague. No matter that they appear every 17 years – bugs so ugly they’re called cigar butts with wings can only be a message.