New Additions!

Time flies and albeit late to the game I want to congratulate the 2 new states that have joined the club of the progressives:

A passage from the openly gay judge who ruled in the case:

Generations of Americans, my own included, were raised in a world in which homosexuality was believed to be a moral perversion, a mental disorder, or a mortal sin. I remember that one of the more popular playground games of my childhood was called "smear the queer" and it was played with great zeal and without a moment’s thought to today’s political correctness. On a darker level, that same worldview led to an environment of cruelty, violence, and self-loathing. It was but 1986 when the United States Supreme Court justified, on the basis of a "millennia of moral teaching," the imprisonment of gay men and lesbian women who engaged in consensual sexual acts. Even today I am reminded of the legacy that we have bequeathed today’s generation when my son looks dismissively at the sweater I bought him for Christmas and, with a roll of his eyes, says "Dad… that is so gay."

From Towleroad:

Judge John Jones III (above, right), a George W. Bush appointee, was not to be outdone by Judge McShane's lyrical and personal approach to the case. To Judge Jones, bans on same-sex marriage, whether they be constitutional provisions or statutes (Oregon had a constitutional amendment; Pennsylvania just had a law), are the worst of us and not worthy of our traditions and our future.

The decision was a broad one, covering equal protection and due process. Judge Jones even called for the application of heightened scrutiny in an equal protection analysis when antigay discrimination is at issue.

But one of the opinion's final lines struck me as too simple, at best:
In the sixty years since Brown [v. Board of Education] was decided, "separate" has thankfully faded into history, and only "equal" remains.

The count now stands at 19 (plus DC) states FOR marriage equality.

That almost half the number of states is now firmly on our side is truly remarkable and with pending litigation in all the remaining 31, it’s only a matter of time before the whole country has marriage equality.