Marriage Equality: The Solution to a Bunch of Idiotic Arguments

I've been meaning to write about how completely wrong Jonathan Rauch -- an openly gay guest scholar at the Brookings Institution -- is in his Times oped from over the weekend HERE that concludes the Supreme Court would be correct to not rule in favor of gay marriage when the Prop 8 verdict is appealed because "sometimes the right answer for the courts is to step aside and let politics do its job."

Rauch -- whose own marriage in the District of Columbia is not valid across the border in his home state of Virginia -- argues that a sensible judge can say something like: "“Same-sex marriage may indeed be a civil right, but not all civil rights demand immediate judicial intervention, and other important interests militate against imposing this one on the whole country right now.”

He says that "the gay-marriage debate, while assuredly a civil rights argument, is much more than that. It is also a debate about the meaning of marriage, about the pace of change in a conflicted society and about who gets to decide."

Seriously? Does he mean like the Supreme Court stayed out of the way and waited until our conflicted society decided to vote to end sodomy laws in Texas? Or when our conflicted society voted to end the ban on interracial marriage? Or when our conflicted society voted to end state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students? (The list goes on, civil rights are not a popularity contest.)

What exactly is he talking about? This is PRECISELY the type of situation where the Supreme Court should intervene to correct a civil rights violation that the general public is not 100 percent behind yet. And the fact that a MAJORITY of people now favor same-sex marriage in many states -- including the one in which the trial is taking place -- makes his "argument" that much more preposterous.

Above, you see -- via my friend Micah -- that the normally gay-friendly "Today Show" is now snubbing LGBTers in its current “TODAY’s Wedding: Modern Love" contest, where one New York couple can win a dream wedding. In a statement from the show, producers said “for the TODAY show wedding, the couple must be able to be legally married in New York, which is where the wedding will take place.” Seriously?

If you agree that this is adding insult to injury -- my New York friends got a quickie license in Connecticut but then still had their wedding in New York in April -- click HERE to sign the petition or send them an e-mail at TODAY@nbcuni.com.

It's "logic-coated" bullshit like this that has me sour on state-by-state "marriages," and only bolsters the argument that marriage equality must be decided by the Supreme Court now.