Yarwood asked for it, so here's my response to this week's big legal/political news out of California:

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental "right to marry" that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June.

Groovy.

What I like about this is that the decision is broader than just gay marriage. It's gay anything. It's taking the moral high-ground of saying, "you can't stop people from doing X just because they're homosexuals." That's the right way to go, in my opinion.

This is going to move the ball forward and probably lead to more states doing likewise, which will lead to an inevitable showdown over whether homophobic states will be obliged to recognize marriages imported from more progressive climbs, and of course over how the federal hydra should react.

Personally, I think that the question over the magic word "marriage" may be a sticky wicket, and I'd be in favor of some kind of national normalization of the financial and legal aspects -- which is historically what it's all about, let's not forget -- and a decoupling of the State from the religious, spiritual or moral dimension of things. Any couple of consenting adults aught to be able to make this kind of union, and I think it's right and good that we encourage this as a society by recognizing special rights, providing tax incentives, etc. Beyond that, the government shouldn't have much to say about it.