One Great, One Good Gay Marriage Ruling

The decidedly non-activist Supremes did as we blowhards had figured all along. This morning's rulings were:

• The Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional on equal-protection grounds.
• California's Prop 8 banning marriage equality remains overturned by state and fed courts there, but does not affect laws in other states.

These are both victories of varying power for gay couples. The details of each were tossed to others by this oddly timid SCOTUS incarnation.

For DOMA, the Obama administration has to get its act together to make the revised rules. Like the overturning of the military absurd don't-ask/don't-tell policy, the feds need to specify how married homosexual couples will receive and be guaranteed access to the services and rights previously denied.

Of course, the feds can't make states that forbid same-sex marriage provide equal state tax, inheritance and other rights. They can make sure that even if the state does not recognize the marriage as legal within its borders, that the couple still gets the federal rights and benefits.

For California, the consensus is that in a few weeks or a month at most, same-sex couples can marry again there. They will join the 18,000-plus couples married there after the legislature passed marriage equality and before Prop 8 stopped that. The two-tiered marriage system ends in California.

At the same time, our most populous state brings the percentage of Americans with the legal option for marriage equality way up. While over three dozen states forbid same-sex marriage, we're quickly headed to half the nation having the legal option in their states.

We can be sure that more bozo state legislatures that rushed to have laws, constitutional amendments or both forbidding equality will be backing out and figuring how to get with the program gracefully.

Big Dog's Duh on DOMA

Maybe it's as simple as Hillary Clinton's stratospheric public approval and acclaim for her Secretary of State role. Meanwhile hubby William J. Clinton kind of labors much more obscurely. As front man for his humbly named William J. Clinton Foundation, he smiles a lot and aims to do big things in world health and such. The man is still competitive and still polishes brass plaques for his legacy trophies.

There's no shine yet on his biggest disgrace, DOMA. Yesterday, he buffed it again with an apology, in the classical not vernacular sense, for the Defense of Marriage Act. His short opinion piece in the WaPo smacks of lawyerly speciousness. It calls to mind his Lewinsky-related testimony about depending on what the meaning of is is.

He writes that DOMA is wrong now, but he can't, simply can't, admit he was wrong about it back in 1996 when he pushed it and signed the bill into law. It was his and he brought Congress and the nation along with him.

Instead, he lawyers up again and again. Oh, it was bipartisan. Oh, a bunch of people figured it would "defuse" the drive to flat outlaw same-sex marriage nationwide (and remove the right to control marriage from states). Oh, only 81 Senators and Reps opposed DOMA. Oh, oh, oh.

For a man who dearly loves himself, he shied away from write I in this piece. He could have written, "I took a gamble, led a compromise, let the chips fall every which way, and buried the issue. I let the anti-gay types think they won something by guaranteeing no federal tax or other benefits for homosexuals. I wanted the pro-equality types to think they could hold shreds and threads of hope if they were willing to fight for one, two or more decades."

That would have been both analytic and candid.

Instead, in his WaPo It's time to overturn DOMA piece, the former President linked to his weasel-worded signing statement that accompanied the bill. Therein, he writes in the first person, opening with "Throughout my life I have strenuously opposed discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans." He concludes the brief statement with DOMA does not "provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination, violence and intimidation for that reason, as well as others, violate the principle of equal protection under the law and have no place in American society."

Chicken lips!

DOMA is discrimination legalized and codified. It has led directly to cases before state, federal and now the SCOTUS. It has punished millions with unequal treatment, a.k.a. discrimination. It was and is a vicious, mean-spirited betrayal of LGBT Americans. It was Bill Clinton's easy way out that has not been at all easy for homosexual couples nationwide ever since.

It's positive that he eventually reversed his one-man/one-woman thinking. He got there before VP Biden and Prez Obama, but not by much. His current call too may help a little. I have to believe it would be a lot more effective if he started with the truth, the whole truth.

SCOTUS Grabs the Monsters

Buckle my knees and pass the smelling salts. I was prepared for the SCOTUS to pass on the 10 marriage-equality cases petitioned. Instead, it picked two for arguments, two that cover nearly all key aspects of same-sex marriage and benefits.

The just-the-facts-ma'am version is in the WaPo. Detail is in the initial report from the NYT. Analysis of the menu of cases before the court was in the Advocate in September.

The short of it is first is the CA Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, argued by Olson and Boies. This surprised me because it deals with the state-level override ballot that overturned the legislature's legalization of same-sex marriage. The SCOTUS could have chickened out on this, saying it was a state issue. Instead, they'll likely consider whether marriage is a fundamental right subject to equal treatment under law — big stuff.

The other could overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, Bill Clinton's biggest mistake as Prez, worse than cigar fantasies and the blue dress. In the United States v. Windsor, the survivor of a pair of women married in Canada sued when DOMA, Section 3 prevented her from inheriting her wife's estate.

This is pure discrimination by gender and orientation. Justice Kagan worked on a related case as solicitor general and likely would recuse herself.

These cases are likely to warm up a lot of people's winters in anticipation.

Arguments in the spring should bring decisions in June.

Overly Delayed Doom of DOMA?

Finally, the dreadfully cruel and irrational Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — sure then President Bill Clinton's biggest mistake, worse than lying about his cigar shenanigans — appears on the way finally to dying under paper and gavel at the Supreme Court.

The AP carries a terse and clear recap of the cases the SCOTUS is considering this week. It would only take one to decide it. For a little poignancy and perhaps a misty eye, add the tale of the dying career soldier who wants her wife to get survivor benefits set up before she goes.

The ruse is well past it's expiration date. The anti-gay types who use Limbaugh and NOM approved code phrases like special rights need to let it go. Legally married people should have the same nights, as in regular normal rights, as any other. Hampering, harming and hindering homosexual marrieds is unconstitutional, uncivil and simply wrong.

Let the SCOTUS get this over with. It was a mistake for it to become the compromise that kept Congress from a bigger blunder of trying to debate a national marriage law back nearly two decades ago. It is all the more obvious that it was stupid then and still is.

Oh, and even the most conservative on the Court have noticed that the nation has moved beyond this particularly irrational fear. Same sex marriage has shown us all that it only brings joy and equality to those directly involved as well as those who know and love them. The only harm has been to them in the hassle and unequal rights by DOMA and states who won't recognize legal marriages.

Make it so, SCOTUS.

Inside Heroes' Minds: SSM Edition

Rachel Maddow did a great interview with Ted Olson and David Boies, the odd couple taking the same-sex issue to the SCOTUS.

They are optimistic and terrified, and in agreement that this is the time.

---

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy