In Fatal Blow To Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Will Now Begin Gay Marriage Throat-Cramming

So unless you do not have the internets or are really really afraid of the gays, you know that yesterday a federal judge struck down Pennsylvania's gay marriage ban. Do you know how much gay marriage throat cramming that makes? It makes so much throat cramming that we cannot even keep track any longer and had to go to Wikipedia to figure out how many states were going to make you get all gay married against your will. Short answer: non-homosexxicans, you are running out of room. Gays gonna be errrywhere soon.

With all the gay gayness happening, we'd kind of forgotten that the Pennsylvania decision was even pending, which is a shame since our boy Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum is one of Pennsylvania'sfinestworst achievements, and you just have to imagine that he is on his knees trying to rip his own heart out and sacrifice it to God just to make all the gayness stop. But it will never stop. In fact, if any of you homosexxican commenters hail from Pennsylvania, it's your sacred duty to go find Rick Santorum right now and force him to gay marry you this very day. Bring your dog, of course.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the judge that made Pennsylvania go gay is one John E. Jones III, a George W. Bush appointee who has now disappointed wingnuts twice, which is unforgivable. Jones was the judge who found a law that mandated the teaching of intelligent design unconstitutional. And now he has betrayed them yet again, finding that gays can just get married all over the place. Can you imagine the deep level of sadness one must feel to be a homophobe Pennsylvanian right now? Haha no you cannot, because you are not jerk baby homophobes.

We couldn't pass up the opportunity to mock poor sad awful Rick Santorum, but the true fact is that the Pennsylvania decision is lovely and moving. Apparently circuit court justices are now in the middle of a beautiful opinion contest, and you should probably read this one.

Today, certain citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are not guaranteed the right to marry the person they love. Nor does Pennsylvania recognize the marriages of other couples who have wed elsewhere. Hoping to end this injustice, eleven courageous lesbian and gay couples, one widow, and two teenage children of one of the aforesaid couples have come together as plaintiffs and asked this Court to declare that all Pennsylvanians have the right to marry the person of their choice and consequently, that the Commonwealth’s laws to the contrary are unconstitutional. We now join the twelve federal district courts across the country which, when confronted with these inequities in their own states, have concluded that all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage.

If you skip over the fact that he uses "aforesaid" without any irony, that is really beautiful, even though we are cynical as fuck up here in Wonkville. And we didn't even mention the fact that each section of the decision, instead of being Part I, II, III, etc., is a part of the standard marriage vow:

For better, for worse

For richer, for poorer

In sickness and in health

Until death do us part.

Shut up we're not crying YOU'RE crying at the "until death do us part" section.

When Mary Beth was diagnosed with inoperable Stage 4 lung cancer, Maureen left her job to care for her and to help run Mary Beth’s business until her death. Towards the end of her life, Mary Beth required Maureen’s help to get out of bed and to the bathroom, and to assist in self-care and administer medications. They were married in Massachusetts after Mary Beth fell ill, but because Pennsylvania does not recognize their marriage, the line for “surviving spouse” was left blank and Mary Beth was identified as “never married” on her death certificate. Maureen was listed as the “informant.”

Seriously, there has been so much gay marrying that there isn't even all that much to lawsplain about this particular opinion. Basically, Jones says that gays should be able to get married because there is no compelling reason to stop them from getting married, and that preventing people from getting married causes them a multitude of difficulty and harm. That's pretty much all there is to it.

Also, "because skygod says so" is not actually a reason, and neither is "it makes me feel icky," and that's exactly what Jones says, except way nicer.

Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional. Nor can past tradition trump the bedrock constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Were that not so, ours would still be a racially segregated nation according to the now rightfully discarded doctrine of “separate but equal.” … In the sixty years since Brown [ v. Board of Education ] was decided, “separate” has thankfully faded into history, and only “equal” remains. Similarly, in future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by marriage. 

We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.

Did you catch that "ash heap of history" part? You know who ELSE used that? No, not Hitler, dummies. None other than Ronald Wilson Reagan, talkin' 'bout communism.

What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

Ain't no way that Jones (or at least Jones's law clerk) didn't know exactly where that particular turn of phrase came from. It's a beautiful little tweak at the nose of Reagan-loving bigots.

Although Jones doesn't address it, we would be remiss if we did not note that presuming that if people who love each other can get married they will also too want to marry their housepets is also not actually a reason, because that is not a thing that really happens.

Suck it, Rick Santorum. The big gay truth is marching on.

[ NYT / Whitewood v. Wolf ]