"Homosexuality is fine," she says absently, opening a new tab to google China.

"--You should probably tell everyone that as soon as possible, it's illegal in Gilead."

"Joy. Yes, I'll do that. What other religious laws does Gilead have?"

Rose tries to think about what is illegal in Gilead and not illegal in Canada or Cascadia. 

"You can't divorce except for a handful of reasons. Converting people to paganism or atheism or Satanism or Islam is illegal. Paid surrogacy is illegal for people under the age of 21, but unpaid surrogacy is strongly encouraged. Paid adoption is illegal. Abortion is illegal. Contraception is illegal but that's not religious, that's just practical because humanity is going extinct. Pornography is illegal. Lots and lots of stuff is illegal for people under the age of 18 to view, like nudes in art and apologetics literature that explains what other religions believe too much. Jews have a whole bunch of laws, I don't know all of them--"

"Judaism and Islam are completely fine. Atheism and Paganism and Satanism are factually wrong but trying to prevent them through exercise of earthly power is a bad idea. Most of the fertility stuff is a low priority since I'm fixing the root of that anyway. Pornography is I guess not uncomplicatedly fine but unless it's live-action stuff that involves coercion of actors it's basically fine. Preventing minors from seeing Michelangelo's David seems a bit silly. What are the handful of reasons for divorce?"

"Reasons for divorce are adultery, your partner committed a felony, addiction, physical or sexual abuse, or two years' separation. --To be clear, none of the laws about Judaism are anti-Semitic! The Commanders consulted extensively with rabbis in drawing up the laws that apply to Jewish people. They're not allowed to buy pork, that sort of thing."

"That's good. Who are the Commanders?"

"They run the government of Gilead. The Commander-in-Chief runs the government as a whole. Each of the other Commanders runs a particular department, like the military or housing or the educational system."

"Hm. Alright. How precisely does homosexuality being illegal shake out?"

"If they catch you having gay sex, you can go to prison. First-time offenders are usually sentenced to go to an institution that treats SSA, same as minor drug offenders. If they know a website is used to get gay people to have sex with each other, they'll arrest you. It's not illegal to experience SSA, of course, and if you're monogamous and don't flaunt it you can usually get away with it." 

"Well, that's going to have to stop. Probably I'll bring back another baby on live television and then immediately and vehemently condone same-sex relationships."

"How-- how did we make that mistake."

"Do you want a specific historical answer, or just 'humans are fallible and make mistakes.'"

"I-- the former. Paul condemns it in Romans, it's condemned in Leviticus, what went wrong?!"

"Oh, at that point it was mostly just condemned in the surrounding cultures and they wanted to promote Christianity as Super Moral. The real trouble started when a Roman Emperor started a cult for his dead boyfriend and that cult got into conflicts with the early Church."

"I suppose He-- you-- didn't condemn it specifically in the Gospels."

"I do not have the human memories of Yeshua son of Miriam and it is not inappropriate to refer to him in the third person to me in order to reduce confusion."

"I-- people have been tortured, you know. In SSA-treatment institutions. It's not common but it happens, especially when they're treating adolescents or involuntary patients. People have married people they don't love and aren't attracted to because it's the only way they could have kids. People have been alone for their entire lives. It seems like you could have conveyed the message that being gay is okay in some way that worked better."

"Yeah. I could say 'free will' and 'humans are fundamentally imperfect' but--yeah."

"Is it the Cascadians or the Canadians who are going to be insufferable because they were right about everything?"

"Well, what's the difference?"

"Canada is a lot like Old America? They're really secular and they don't let teenage girls be surrogates or have paid adoptions and they have a ton of surrogacy regulations. It's all to protect women's rights"-- this said in a somewhat derisive tone-- "but their birth rate is ridiculously low. Cascadia is weird. They're sort of... paranoid hippies who are really into teenagers having rights? They encourage teenage girls to raise babies, have enough nukes to turn every inch of North America into radioactive sludge, eat their pets, and keep talking about legalizing polygamy."

"I...don't approve of nuclear weapons...and some context on eating their pets is going to be necessary...but given what you've told me about bitoxiphosphene teenage girls raising babies sounds like the least bad solution and teenagers having rights is a good thing and legalizing polygamy is fine as long as it's a reasonably egalitarian form of polygamy. Canada sounds like their life choices would have been really bad if I hadn't shown up but I did."

"Oh, uh, Gilead nuked them when they seceded. For context on their arsenal of nuclear weapons."

"...Why...did Gilead...do that."