What's different about the recent development in Vermont is that it eviscerates one of the arguments in the anti-gay forces' bag of nastiness. Until now, they claimed that the only way gay marriage could be legalized was by "activist" (defined as "people they didn't agree with") judges who stretched civil rights law to suit their own perverted ends.

Whenever the issue was subjected to a state legislature, which represented the true will of the people, it was bound to fail (so they maintained).

Well, the Vermont legislature not only passed same-sex marriage into law, it did so by overriding the veto of a Republican governor. You can't get much more willful than that. Makes one wonder what Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys were up to besides revolutionizin'.

The Vermont vote even overshadowed the state supreme court decision in Iowa (Iowa!) reflecting the legal view that a class of individuals' civil rights were being violated by not allowing them to marry.

If the Forces of Righteousness decide they want to boycott products from the offending states, breakfast is going to be a pretty dreary affair. No bacon or ham if it comes from the Devil's farmyard in Iowa. No corn muffins, neither. Dry pancakes, too, if the maple syrup's made in Vee-Tee. And that Thanksgiving turkey's gonna be mighty bland without Massachusetts cranberries.

My old home state, Oklahoma, is likely to be one of the last to allow this kind of outlandishness to occur. Then again, it only just outlawed cockfighting a few years ago.