Last Outposts Of Decency Idaho, Arkansas Fall To Communism We Mean Gay Marriage

Open wide, Idaho, because we’re cramming some big gay homo marriage right down your throat! (Try relaxing your jaw and breathing through your nose.)

Late Tuesday a federal judge in Boise struck down Idaho’s gay marriage ban, declaring a referendum passed in 2006 that enshrined the principle of one-heterosexual-man-one-heterosexual-woman marriage in the state constitution out of bounds. In her decision, Chief Magistrate Judge Candy Wagahoff Dale wrote that “Marriage is a fundamental right of all citizens, which neither tradition nor the majority may deny,” failing to add “So it doesn’t matter if 63% of you voted for this referendum, it’s still unconstitutional, no matter what your nitwitted governor may say.”

Said nitwitted governor, C.L. “Butch” Otter (Could there be a more ironic nickname for a guy who just lost a case to four lesbian couples?) responded with the predictable pablum about how the people of Idaho (Idahoites? Idahoans? Aryans?) had exercised their “fundamental right reaffirming that marriage is the union of a man and a woman” blah blah blah. It’s the same cookie-cutter whining that all the bigots toss out when they lose one of these cases, as they are doing with regularity these days. They must have a Word macro they have emailed around to each other. It probably saves time.

Dale did not stay her decision pending an appeal, but she did say it won’t go into effect until Friday morning at 9 A.M., which will give the state plenty of time to ask for an emergency stay from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco. So don’t start choosing floral arrangements quite yet, Idaho gays.

The Idaho decision comes on the heels of a judge in Arkansas striking down that state’s gay marriage ban just last week, making it the first state in the old Confederacy to allow same-sex marriages. Gays there immediately started getting hitched, though seventy of the state’s seventy-five clerks refused to issue licenses; some stated they would wait for the appeal to be decided or for the state Supreme Court to rule on the issue so they won’t violate a law that fines clerks for “wrongful issuance of a marriage license.”

The Arkansas case just don’t set right with former governor Mike Huckabee, who wants the judge who issued the decision impeached right away. Which is just the sort of thing we should do anytime a judge issues a ruling we don’t like. That's in no way a recipe for anarchy.

Someone stuff a dead squirrel in Huck’s mouth and send him back to the kids’ table. No wait, don’t! If his gullet is full of squirrel he might not have room for all the gay marriage we want to cram in there.

We’re wondering if the Supreme Court regrets ducking the issue last year, since Idaho makes 19 states that now allow gay marriage and the bans are getting knocked down almost as fast as the judges can write decisions. Plus on Monday five gay couples filed a suit to force Alaska to rescind its same-sex marriage ban and an appeals court in Virginia heard arguments on that state’s ban, which was overturned by a lower court in February.

With all these cases going on -- and there are suits pending in at least 30 more states, according to the New York Times -- one of these appeals will get back up to the SCOTUS sooner rather than later.

Somewhere, Anthony Kennedy is fapping over one of his law books.

[ L.A. Times / USA Today / CBS News / NYT ]