Following Iowa, Vermont:
Vermont legalized gay marriage on Tuesday after lawmakers overrode a veto from the governor by a wafer-thin margin, making the New England state the fourth in the United States where gays can wed.
The vote, nine years after Vermont was first in the United States to adopt a same-sex civil-union law, also makes the tiny state of 624,000 people the first in the nation to introduce gay marriage through legislative action instead of the courts.
In response to which Rod Dreher says that, though he's opposed to gay marriage, if it's going to be legalized, this is the right way to do it - that is, legislatively, through 'the elected representatives of the people', rather than having it 'imposed on unwilling polities by the judiciary'. I must say I find this a strange argument coming from within a liberal democratic culture that generally lauds the separation of powers. Particularly since the subject here is that of a person's sexuality, a matter at the very heart of questions of identity, of the right of individuals to freely choose to be who they are. If the courts are thought unfit to rule on a question like this, it amounts to saying that social majorities can dictate how each of us lives, even though our life choices may be injurious to no one. For this argument to be made in the United States of America of all places does strike me as odd. (Via Memeorandum.)