Those cocktail voters were already voting R because they're all about taxes and really don't care whose rights get stomped on as long as they don't pay too much taxes.

Perhaps, after the primary their self-inflicted quandary will abate.  However, at this point, Jeb! is nostalgic for that easy question on Iraq that only took a week to answer--badly.  Of course, for Huckabee, marriage equality is not only cat nip for his followers, but also his own bread and butter.

Agreed, that the child that was given birth today has a generation of fathers and mothers.  In reality, the gestation period was extensive and the child born is a bouncing adult.

To me the poignant passage of the beautifully written opinion (I suspect was crafted as a joint venture) was the observation that the recognition of new insights and societal understandings have uncovered unjustified inequality  within the fundamental institution that was passed over unnoticed and unchallenged.  Indeed, easy to pass over when suppressed by anachronistic criminal laws.

Although the Chief Justice, in his dissent, sees the Court's decision as a cause for celebration for gays as well as other supporters, he says that the constitution is not its basis.  It seems the Chief is trying to span the chasm, but he constructs a bridge to nowhere. It is the Constitution that is celebrated.

The other dissenters come up with thread-bare traditional arguments on traditional marriage.  Alito hangs his hat on traditional marriage means procreation, not that "thoroughly modern millie" idea of happiness of persons who chose to marry.  It is a wonderment how Alito, that good Catholic, explains traditional marriage for divorcees who want to receive communion need to be chaste, living like brother and sister  (non-Deliverance siblings only).

Scalia opines that marriage (traditional) abridges rather than expands intimacy.  Just asking for a hippie, he claims.  He needs to loosen up his cilice and move beyond the Haight Ashbury lore he has read about.  The Scalia rant that remains is more targeted at the Court than the issue.  

If they lack consensus, so be it.  Roberts isn't responsible for corralling his co-conspirators into a faux agreement.  His objections were legal.  But his final paragraph was welcoming.

If you are among the many Americans - of whatever sexual orientation - who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision.  Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal.  Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of committment to a partner.  Celebrate the availability of new benefits.  But do not celebrate the Constitution.  It had nothing to do with it.

CST: "Shout-out to my home state this week - first to enact gay marriage, first to enact 'universal' (I know we're not quite there yet) healthcare."

... coverage in the 90%-plus range when its Prepaid Health Care Act of 1974 was enacted by the state legislature and signed into law by Acting Gov. George Ariyoshi, some 32 years before Massachusetts took up the challenge. It was the first state to do so.

In fact, significant elements of that 2006 Massachusetts plan were based upon already-existing Hawaii law. The most notable example is its employer mandate. Another is its creation of Commonwealth Care Health Insurance -- a subsidized insurance program for those who earn less than 300% of
the federal poverty Level and are ineligible for  MassHealth (Medicaid) -- which was modeled on AlohaCare, created by Hawaii for the same purpose twelve years prior in 1994.

Further, Hawaii has managed to achieve and maintain that remarkably high level of coverage without an over-reliance on the state's Medicaid program; the percentage of island residents in need of Medicaid is less than half that of those in Massachusetts.

Regarding same-sex marriage, it's true that Massachusetts was the first to recognize its legality, and commonwealth residents should take justifiable pride in that singular accomplishment.

That said, it should also be noted that back in May 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court became the first significant judicial body in the entire nation to rule that unless the government could demonstrate a clear and compelling interest for doing so, its denial of the right of gay men and lesbians to marry whomever they choose constituted a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Per Baehr v. Lewin [74 Haw. 645, 852 P.2d 44 (May 5, 1993)]:

"[W]e are being accused of engaging in judicial legislation. We are not. The result we reach today is in complete harmony with the [the U.S. Supreme Court's observation in Loving v. Virginia] that any state's powers to regulate marriage are subject to the constraints imposed by the constitutional right to the equal protection of the laws. If it should ultimately be determined that the marriage laws of Hawaii impermissibly discriminate against the appellants, based on the suspect category of sex, then that would be the result of the interrelation of existing legislation." (Emphasis is mine.)

I would further add that it was the conservatives' fear of what liberal Hawaii might do in that regard, which drove the GOP-controlled Congress to enact the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. In fact, the House Judiciary Committee's July 1996 report on the then-pending federal legislation specifically notes that DOMA was being considered as a direct response to the Hawaii Supreme Court's 1993 Baehr ruling:

"The legal assault against traditional heterosexual marriage laws achieved its greatest breakthrough in the State of Hawaii in 1993. Because H.R. 3396 was motivated by the Hawaiian lawsuit, the Committee thinks it is important to discuss that situation in some detail. [...] It is, of course, no business of Congress how the Hawaiian Supreme
Court interprets the Hawaiian Constitution, and the Committee expresses no opinion on the propriety of the ruling in Baehr. But the Committee does think it significant that the threat to traditional marriage laws in Hawaii and elsewhere has come about because two judges of one state Supreme Court have given credence to a legal theory being advanced by gay rights lawyers. [...] A redefinition of marriage in Hawaii to include homosexual couples could make such couples eligible for a whole range of federal rights and benefits." (Emphasis is mine.)

On other issues, I would also note that Hawaii was the very first state in the country to adopt an Equal Rights Amendment in its state constitution, the first to legalize a woman's right to seek an abortion should she so choose (and did so two years before Roe v. Wade), and the first to guarantee constitutionally the right of working people to bargain collectively with employers (Article XII, Sec. 2, Constitution of 1950).

And lest I forget my late former boss, Congresswoman Patsy Mink of Pa'ia, Maui, she is best remembered today as the woman who authored the landmark federal legislation known as Title IX, which guarantees equal opportunity for women at all levels of Education, and which was renamed the Mink Act by Congress after her death in Sept. 2002.

I realize that we're often an afterthought to the rest of the country, except perhaps at vacation time, being as remote geographically as we are and five time zones removed from the east coast. But despite what 20%-plus of Republicans might still think, Hawaii has been an integral part of the United States proper since August 1959 and further, American territory since 1898.

Therefore, credit for my adopted home state's own substantive contributions to progressive innovations and achievements in our country should be recognized, and thus given where it's properly due.

CaptHowdy: "I may have to life my embargo on Sunday morning TV this weekend."

Unless, of course, I'm suddenly interested in witnessing a prolonged bout of right-wing pearl clutching with all its attendant rhetorical excesses, while the shows' resident bobbleheads alternately furrow their brows with looks of concern and nod their heads approvingly in near-unison.

All the yacking and noise against marriage equality is what made the ruling seem so magical even though there is nothing magical about it, it's basic human rights and civil rights.

Never thought I would live in this world, but here we are.