Marriage is an important part of getting ahead: lets people know you’re not a homo; married guy seems more stable; people see the ring, they think at least somebody can stand the son of a bitch; ladies see the ring, they know immediately you must have some cash or your cock must work.

Now, Mr. Scorsese. Martin. Marty, if you will. Warner Brothers greenlit The Departed in early 2005. Principal photography began that spring. At the time you filmed this scene, Marty, at the very moment Alec Baldwin, in character as Captain Ellerby, proclaimed that “marriage… lets people know you’re not a homo,” gay marriage had been legal in the great state of Massachusetts for exactly one year.

That’s right. 2004: Cambridge City Hall performed the first legal gay marriages in the United States; the Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino. Proof positive that God does not, in fact, hate fags, certainly, but also, and irrefutably, a contradiction of Ellerby’s claim that marriage lets people know you’re not a homo.

Of course, Matt Damon’s Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan is a homo, and you don’t even have to take my word for it. But that’s beside the point, which is that, had Sullivan not been [spoiler alert] shot in the head by Mark Wahlberg, or at least not [spoiler alert] groomed for a life of crime by Jack Nicholson after having been [speculation alert] repeatedly molested as an altar boy by Boston’s notorious Catholic priests, he could’ve gotten some therapy, met a nice bricklayer, and legally married him, per Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003), and I can’t understand for the life of me, Marty, why nobody on set caught this. Script supervisor Martha Pinson, I’m looking at you. Thank you for your time.