Andrew Sullivan on yesterday's ruling in California by Judge Kramer regarding the unconstitutionality of banning gay marriage.

I should reiterate that in principle, I'd like the courts to be more restrained. But in practice, the logic of equality is so over-powering, and the arguments against it so fragile, that judges have little choice but to state the obvious. Like many other judges in these cases, Kramer is not a radical. He's a Catholic Republican appointed by a former Republican governor. But his intellectual honesty simply compels him to state that equality means equality. And when state constitutions insist upon it, you have to have a much stronger argument to keep a minority disenfranchised than the current anti-marriage forces have been able to marshall. Tradition? So was the ban on inter-racial marriage. Procreation? Non-procreative straight couples can get civil licenses. The potential collapse of civilization? Impossible to prove or even argue convincingly. Once you have accepted that there is no moral difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, the arguments against same-sex marriage collapse. And since the only coherent moral difference is the likelihood of non-procreative sex, and that is now the norm in traditional heterosexual civil marriage, there is no moral case against allowing gay couples to have civil marriage. The rest is fear and prejudice and religious conviction. None should have a place as a legal argument in the courts.

Sorry for the long quote, but Sullivan is just so right--as usual.

Posted by Hey Paul   |   Tuesday, March 15, 2005