Freedom and Justice for All. Unless You're Gay.

Unbelievably, against all evidence of a progressive mindset, the California Supreme Court has decided that gay people are not entitled to the full set of human rights that most of us enjoy. Marriage is a right that has been taken off their table.

The argument (a word which barely applies here) is that we must protect the sanctimony of the word "marriage" and restrict it to unions between a man and a woman. We must do this to protect children.

Here's a newsflash: the institution of marriage has bigger problems than the sexual orientation of it's participants. My young children already have a command of terms like step-father, half sister, ex-wife, and single mother. One may pretend that we all live in happy, nuclear families but let's be honest. Pretending as much will be unlikely to fool the children we hope to protect with this idealistic view. They are living a different reality and know otherwise.

I say it makes no sense to shield marriage from same-sex unions when so many other (more prevalent) threats are already tearing it apart. And if such a protection initiative involves denying basic rights to large chunks of the population, it is really not a defensible idea.