The outgoing state senator thinks the commonwealth is oppressive, racist and sexist, and it wouldn't surprise me if he started his own personal crusade to secede, starting when Fumo implied, with all the subtlety of Jeremiah Wright, that his Harrisburg colleagues would pass a slavery bill if given the chance.

Honestly, doesn't it seem as if Philadelphia pols are programmed to insult their colleagues in the rest of the state? First you have Gov. Rendell (who still believes he's Mayor Rendell) pontificating about how white Pennsylvanians would have a problem voting for a black candidate.

He didn't mean us, of course. We urbanites and suburbanites are much more sophisticated than that - wink, wink. He was referring to the bitter, God-fearing, gun-toting hicks in Shamokin, Erie and Danville. (OK, now that the primary is over, can someone please tranquilize Fast Eddie?)

Then you had Mayor Nutter tossing his own chai latte in the river by signing some spurious and patently unconstitutional gun bills into law. It was as if he was saying to the rest of the state, including the guys and gals on the Supreme Court, that he didn't much care about the state constitution. Which is fine, I suppose, as long as you're willing to have your allowance cut by the adults in Harrisburg.

But leave it to Fumo to make the most spectacular splash of all, telling a black minister who'd come to testify against a marriage amendment that "If we introduced a bill on slavery, it might pass."

The senator is incensed that the Legislature would even consider defining marriage as a bond between a man and a woman.

That's understandable, given his long-standing support for the GLBT community, a big part of which is located in his district. Whether he sympathizes with the cause, or is just a savvy pol (or both), no one should be surprised that Fumo is a vocal defender of gay rights.

Except, of course, for that time he called one of his colleagues a "faggot."

He apologized, profusely. Will he do the same after, in essence, calling his colleagues crackers?

Doubtful.

No matter how you look at it, equating a ban on same-sex marriage with slavery, then slandering other senators with the less-than-nuanced comments that they were ready to make Mr. Jim Crow an honorary Pennsylvanian is unworthy of an elected politician, even one who is under a 139-count indictment.

Of course, a man who's about to leave office doesn't have to worry too much about watching his language. In fact, given the type of man Fumo has shown himself to be for the past three decades, impending retirement (possibly to the Big House) would only increase the opportunities for him to speak his mind.

But there's something really offensive in telling a black minister that his church's opposition to gay marriage is in any way, shape or form equivalent to this country's sordid history of human bondage.

After all, marriage is not an unconditional right, despite what the constitutional scholars might think.

Reasonable restrictions are permissible, including bans on incest and polygamy. Trying to call those who oppose same-sex marriage bigots might look good as a sound bite on the local evening news, but it just reveals another type of bias.

On the other hand, slavery was the complete and total degradation of a swath of humanity, based solely on skin color.

To say that Pennsylvania is ready to reinstate a system that many of its own young men sacrificed their lives for on the battleground of Gettysburg - that's Gettysburg, Pa., senator - is an abominable insult.

Fumo's remarks are just another example of what happens when Philadelphians forget that we are not a separate kingdom, answerable only to ourselves (but funded, of course, by the folks in tacky and ignorant places like Scranton and Lackawanna and Jim Thorpe).

It's the same sort of philosophy that makes us a laughingstock in the rest of this great state, the black sheep,

the crazy aunt you keep in the closet and away from the

dinner guests.

FOR FUMO TO compare his colleagues to racists because they believe that marriage should be limited, as it has been for millennia, to unions between one man and one woman shows a distressing lack of respect for the vast majority of Pennsylvanians who reject our country's sad history of slavery but who simply don't believe that the definition of family should be subject to change.

But maybe we Philadelphians are so out of synch with the rest of the state that we really should secede after all.

Got tea? *

See Christine Flowers on Channel 6's "Inside Story" Sunday at 11:30 a.m.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.