Gay Marriage in D.C.

Despite the knuckle-dragging homophobes' best efforts to stop it, "gay marriage" is now legal in D.C. Yes, that's right, the District of Columbia, our nation's capitol. Young, bright, (and quite sexy), rising star in the Democratic Party, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, signed the measure into law in December 2009, and today the law goes into effect. Several couples have already shown up this morning to get their marriage licenses. Opponents of the law petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the law from taking effect, but Chief Justice Roberts issued a three-page order yesterday, concluding the high court should defer to local matters in the federal district of Washington. And he said a separate ballot initiative to overturn the law would give voters a chance to weigh in on the question.
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(d.c. mayor adrian fenty)

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Opponents of gay marriage love to crow that in every state where the public votes on the issue, the measure fails. They would be wise to take note of U.S. history; in every major social advancement in our nation's history, the "voting public" was overwhelmingly against the idea before it became accepted. If we left everything up to the voting public, we'd still have slavery, women could not vote and Social Security would not exist. In a national poll taken just before the Medicare Act was passed in the 1960's, less than 25% of the American people said they wanted it. Now, just try to take Medicare away! Even the tea-baggers last year, when showing up at anti-health care rallies, carried signs that read: "Get your government hands off my Medicare!" (We know, we know, but that's for another post.)
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What we wonder, today, is what it must feel like in the cave-dwelling, Neanderthalistic home of a typical homophobe? He reads, well, maybe not reads, but hears that D.C. now joins Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Iowa as states where gays can legally marry. As he seethes, nearly drowning in his backwoods ignorance, what must it feel like to know that the world is passing him by, that the world is leaving him behind? As he is convinced that gays are destroying the "real America" that he and Sarah Palin cherish, more and more people seem to disagree with him. What must that feel like? It must be getting lonlier and lonlier in that cave.