I Love New York

I generally regard the New York State Legislature as pretty much a pack of drooling circus clowns who have to use political juice to get elected because they are largely incapable of earning an honest wage. So they get elected in order to make a good living from bribery.

But not this week.

Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.

Four Republican state senators bucked their party in order to pass the bill. The conservatives are already vowing retribution.

Make no mistake about this: The Right has lost on this issue. Gay marriage bans will fall in state after state. Eventually, a gay couple will marry in a northern state, move to a southern state, be discriminated against and then the courts will invalidate gay marriage bans nationwide.

Within a couple of decades, Republicans will be back-pedaling and trying to explain that no, they were not really bigots and homophobes when they opposed gay marriage.

Good luck with that.