Inch by inch

Row by row.... Just thinking about some of the deeper meaning that could be plucked out of that song after reading how the New York Times reports that

[a] New York State judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that a state law that effectively denied gay couples the right to marry violated the state Constitution, a decision that raised the possibility that the city would begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as soon as next month.

The ruling, by Justice Doris Ling-Cohan, was the first on the state level to side with proponents of gay marriage. In her 62-page decision, she wrote that the state's Domestic Relations Law, which dates to 1909 and limits marriage to unions between opposite-sex couples, deprived gay couples of equal protection and due process rights under the state Constitution.

She likened the law to those that once barred interracial marriages and said that words currently used in defining legal marriages - husband and wife, groom and bride - "shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women."

The Times goes on to note that the ruling only applies to New York City and that other judges in other counties have upheld the old law. At some point, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, will have to settle the matter.

Meanwhile,

if the city does not appeal within 30 days, the city clerk's office would be required to issue a license to any gay couple that applies, something gay couples across the city and state have been seeking for years. And in her ruling, Justice Ling-Cohan all but ordered the city clerk to do so.

Not surprisingly, Gov. George Pataki

"strongly believes that the judge's decision is wrong," said Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki. "New York's marriage laws are clear that marriage is between a man and a woman and any changes to our laws should be made through the legislative process, not by a judge or local officials."

That is, the same old crap that wingers always trot out about judges "making law." In addition to invalidating a significant part of judicial review, these cretins conveniently and self-servingly overlook a basic fact: The constitution is the law, it's the highest law, the law to which all others must conform. That's what it's there for. A state judge who declares a law invalid because it violates the state constitution is not making law, they are following the law. If you want to disagree with Judge Ling-Cohan's ruling, if you want to say her logic is wrong and the law is valid, fine. But you cannot rationally dispute her on the grounds of what the state law says when the issue is what the state constitution says.