When you’re talking about the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) a good defense is apparently a good offense – and no one is more offensive than Pat Robertson.

Robertson, God’s official gaffemeister, says it’s okay to punch out of a presumably ‘traditional’ marriage if one spouse has Alzheimer’s.

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s (the spouse) going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said.

From the quote, it’s hard to tell if he intends this privilege as a traditional male-only perk, but that’s another gaffe for another day.

Robertson’s unusual advice comes with a sort of ecumenical escape clause. According to God’s worst PR person, marriage vows to take each other “for better or for worse” and “in sickness and in health,” are suspended by the whole “til death do us part” sub-clause.

Why? Robertson says Alzheimer’s is “a kind of death.” He doesn’t cite a traditional values bible passage explaining his position, but if gays can cause hurricanes and earthquakes I suppose Robertson can choose only the gospels he finds convenient.

Robertson also breaks from the traditional dogma followed by most other Christians by ignoring Jesus’s words in the Gospel of Mark. Words that say divorce and remarriage is adultery. You know, that pesky 7th Commandment plastered on school hallways across the land.

Perhaps Robertson needs to stop by a school hallway for a refresher course.

As with most of his goof-spouting, he derives his idea of consistent piousness comes from the same intellectual font as Michelle Bachmann’s – Nasty, Rude, Brutish, and Short – Official Barristers to God. He gets all the communal property in his traditional values divorce so he can dole it out as he sees fit, including his definition of death.

Morality is the business of the person living it, not some failed faith healer claiming to have a non-secular cellphone with the Big Guy on speed dial. Married gays would, and expect to be, in the same positions as straights. Some accept each other in, “for better or worse and in sickness and health, until death do us part” and stick it out. Some, not so much. Just like traditional couples. It’s a tough decision for anyone, so I’d suggest you follow your own wise advice. “(I) wouldn’t put a guilt trip on anyone who took such a step.”

But Pat, if you wouldn’t put it this on someone else, you should feel guilty as hell about putting a guilt trip in other circumstances – like gay marriage.