Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Down To Three

Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) endorsed marriage equality yesterday.

After lengthy consideration, my views have evolved sufficiently to support marriage equality legislation. This position doesn’t require any religious denomination to alter any of its tenets; it simply forbids government from discrimination regarding who can marry whom.

That leaves three Democrats who have not come out, so to speak: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).  Chances are they will be the hold-outs.  We’re still at only two Republicans who support it.

Frankly I’m amazed that we have only three left.  Twenty — hell, ten — years ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find three senators who would have supported the idea of marriage equality in private, much less making a press release out of it.  That’s real progress.

Granted, having the Senate majority agree on something and actually being able to do anything about it are two very different things.  But at least the days of that creepy old Jesse Helms holding forth on the Senate floor and savoring the way he said “sodomites” like he was licking a barbeque rib (yeah, I wondered about that, too) are gone.