A few bits of good news, one

Just for one of those occasional changes from the gloom and doom and fussing and fuming around here, I thought I'd run down a few items of good news that have happened recently. Of course - remember where you are - several of them come with a "but." Still, while even those may not be unalloyed good news, they still are good.

The big thing, in the sense of being the one I suppose everyone knows about and therefore requires little description, is the recent ruling by the California Supreme Court that under the state constitution,

gays have a constitutional right to marry, striking down state laws that forbade it....

The 4 to 3 ruling opened the way for the nation's most populous state to join Massachusetts in allowing partners of the same sex to marry. The court's order becomes final in 30 days, and it told county clerks and registrars to prepare.

Marriage is a "basic civil right" guaranteed to all Californians, "whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote in a 121-page ruling.

The practical legal effect of the decision on individuals is relatively small, as California already had one of the most liberal civil union laws in the country, allowing same-sex couples almost all the legal rights and protections of marriage. But the symbolic effect is huge, as the Court found that sexual orientation "does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights" and that limiting "marriage" to opposite-sex couples denies same-sex couples "equal dignity and respect."

That last is important because it goes to the heart of the "why not civil unions" argument: It offers "separate but equal" when we know from experience that separate is very rarely equal. Shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in November 2003 legalizing same-sex marriage, I had an email exchange on the issue with a friend, in which I said that

[m]y concern is that as long as we use different terms, there will always be the notion that one ("marriage") is somehow better, superior, to the other ("civil union"). "Oh, well, we're married, you see. You just have one of those civil union things." It implies a judgment. ...

As long as we allow different terms, we allow the perception - and thus justify the practice - of actual difference.

The Court, to its credit, recognized that.

The "but" here is that of course the bigots and reactionaries are not going to let this lie; they have already filed petitions for a fall ballot question to amend California's constitution to define marriage as one man and one woman and have filed a motion with the Court to delay implementation of the ruling until after then. They claim that otherwise there would be "legal chaos" when same-sex marriages are undone (since they are certain, of course, the measure will pass), but USC law professor David Cruz nailed the real reason:

[T]he prospect of almost six months of same-sex couples getting married, continuing their daily lives throughout the state, letting people see that their lives haven't changed, the sky hasn't fallen and loving relationships have strengthened - that would make it unlikely the ballot measure would pass....

In other words, they know damn well the measure would fail for the same reason the attempt to change Massachusetts' constitution in the wake of that state's Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage collapsed: Nothing happened.

Life went on, social chaos didn't set in, straight couples continued to live and love, fight and forgive, work and play, join and separate, exactly as before. The only change was that there were some more married couples in the state. One legislator who initially supported the amendment and later changed his mind said specifically that was the reason: the conflict and confusion which he feared never happened.

That's the thing: The bigots and reactionaries don't want people to have the experience of seeing same-sex marriage exist - because they know damn well that if that happens, they lose. The biggest weapons in their increasingly-anachronistic arsenal are the simple fear of the unfamiliar, of change, which is especially potent in a time of economic or social stress, and - to be crudely blunt - a certain "ick" factor about gays and lesbians that many straights hold. Let same-sex marriage become a reality and the fear rapidly dissipates as the world doesn't doesn't cave in - and without that fear the "ick" factor, even if it remains, loses much of its political motive force.

In short, the bigots and reactionaries aren't afraid that same-sex marriage will undermine either society in general or traditional marriage in particular. They're afraid it won't, that instead it will undermine their bigotry. So cheer the Court and cheer that Cruz predicts that the Court will not grant the motion to delay the effect of its ruling (so "we are definitely going to be seeing same-sex couples getting married") and prepare for all the old lies to be spread again as the bozos and buffoons of the right try to protect their shrinking turf.

Footnote: A fantasy that will come from the Dummycrats is how they have to run scared from the issue because, after all, remember all those states that had constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2004! And Bush won all those states!

Which is true, but: He won all the same states in 2000. Overall, he did no better in the states with the amendments than he did in those without them. And in one state, Ohio, he actually did a little worse than he did in 2000.