'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'

Folks are reacting to that line at the ruling.

AoSHQ is especially good. And Jeff Goldstein responds:

... this ruling does nothing more than enshrine the notion that what has always been the definition for marriage can no longer be the definition for marriage, because defining marriage as it has always been defined is discriminatory against those who wish it was defined in a way more to their liking, and in a way that changes what it is and has always been into something it never was nor ever has been. But be that as it may.

I've tired of writing about this, frankly. I'm not so much in the business of seeking to deprive people rights --- contrived rights, be that as it may as well --- and I'm to the point where the only legitimate solution I see would be a federalist one, to let the voters in their own states decide how they want to define marriage. The courts will not reflect the people on this, and the law will be tweaked to extend the right to marry to a faction that's not interested in the traditional bases of that institution. I'm reminded of Robert Bork's comments on the larger implications:

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

NYT has a story up now (FWIW), "Court Rejects Same-Sex Marriage Ban in California" (via Memeorandum).