How Hard Are Opponents of Marriage Equality Losing?

So hard. So very hard. So hard that progressive John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, and libertarian Robert Levy, chair of the Cato Institute, have signed on as co-chairs of the advisory board to the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which will be appealing the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, currently before a federal district court in California, all the way to the Supreme Court in pursuit of marriage equality.

Although we serve, respectively, as president of a progressive and chairman of a libertarian think tank, we are not joining the foundation's advisory board to present a "bipartisan" front. Rather, we have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation's character. This is not about politics; it's about an indispensable right vested in all Americans.

…The decision in Perry depends, of course, on values far more permanent and important than opinion polls. No less than the constitutional rights of millions of Americans are at stake. But the public appears to be catching up with the Constitution. Just a little more leadership from the courts would be the perfect prescription for a free society.

Podesta and Levy make excellent points about the role of the courts and the responsibility they carry to balance mob rule that denies what ought to be constitutionally protected rights (e.g. Loving), arguments that will surely be familiar to anyone who's been hanging around here for five minutes. It's really quite a stunning thing to see, right there in the Washington Post. That CAP and Cato are both on board with marriage equality, no less on the same damn train, quite genuinely means marriage equality is soon to be reality; it's just a matter of time.

Last weekend, I was watching the documentary Same Sex America (trailer here), which followed seven same-sex couples through the historical Massachusetts constitutional convention and associated legal wrangling which eventually resulted in legalized same-sex marriage in the state. I saw the film when it first came out in '06, and even then the juxtaposition between the opponents of marriage equality caterwauling about the end of society as we know it, and life carrying on approximately as usual, save for the long-denied benefits of marriage finally being enjoyed by same-sex couples, was hilarious. Four years later, the doomsayers look positively absurd.

By the time Perry reaches SCOTUS, I can't imagine that the "society has a vested interest in privileging a traditional family structure" bullshit that has been used in lower court decisions won't be regarded as wholesale disingenuous poppycock, the province of no one but the intellectually dishonest and the immovably bigoted.

Which doesn't mean that the court won't find yet some stupid way to delay the inevitable—but it's going to be harder than it used to be.