Taking a cue from One Million Moms, the president of the National Organization for Marriage has responded to this week's Astonishing X-Men #51 with a fundraising message voicing concerns about "the sanctity of a comic book gay wedding."

Brian S. Brown, whose five-year-old nonprofit group is dedicated to fighting same-sex marriage, is troubled not just by the Marvel comic depicting the wedding of Northstar and Kyle Jinadu but by the real-life ceremony it inspired at Midtown Comics in New York City. However, Brown, whose job is to help ensure state legislatures don't pass marriage-equality laws -- or if they do, that they're overturned by ballot measures -- isn't bothered by the wedding of two men, either fictional or real. Heck, he even wishes Midtown couple Scott Everhart and Jason Welker well, offering a not-at-all-condescending "bless him" to the former.

So it's not that; oh, no. It's the crass commercialization of the whole thing.

"... Something is wrong when huge companies push gay marriage into children's literature in order to make money. Something is wrong when a comic book store decides to host a wedding, again for commercial purposes," Brown writes in a message that ends by thanking NOM supporters for their financial contributions. "And something is really wrong when a man proposes because, well, somebody else is going to help pay for the wedding and it might mean a cool trip to New York City. Somewhere there may be some foolish man and woman getting married in a comic book store. But nobody else is paying for it and nobody in the media is covering it. Are we really supposed to believe in the 'sanctity' of gay comic book weddings?"

Presumably we can expect Brown's next missive to sound the alarm about "Today Throws a Wedding."

The ensuing comments thread contains a number of posts challenging Brown's statements, leading one supporter to wish NOM would moderate the discussion "so the ones who desire to promote same-sex marriage could take their debate elsewhere." But many of the responses are predictable, with one supporter comparing the comic-book depiction of a gay wedding to pedophiles "grooming" children, and another invoking the terrifying specters of SpongeBob and the Teletubbies.

"The homosexualists who work in the arts are always trying to foist their agenda on our children," he writes, presumably in all seriousness. "We are forever grateful to the Rev. Jerry Falwell who alerted Christian parents to Tinky Winky, an obvious gay Teletubbie. We also honour the vigilance of James Dobson of Focus on the Family who identified SpongeBob Square Pants as a gay menace to children and family values because he sang a song promoting diversity. Never underestimate these gay characters cleverly disguised as 'heroes.'"

Jean-Paul Beaubier: This decade's Tinky Winky.