Flowers? Candy? Wedding license?

The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has given the ultimate Valentine's Day present to 665 happy gay and lesbian couples thus far by issuing them marriage licenses and allowing them to tie the knot at City Hall yesterday. Not only will there be more weddings today - city officials announced that they would stay open over the Presidents' Day holiday to accomodate the rush not only of San Franciscans but Californians and Americans at-large who are coming to tie the knot this weekend - but a motion by a conservative group to legally halt the marriage marathon was rejected by a judge, although the "family values" crowd will have an opportunity to present their case for gratuitous bigotry when the courts open again on Tuesday.

That anyone would want to spend the rest of his or her life with someone else is a thing that we all should celebrate in a nation where the divorce rate is over fifty percent. Love that is lasting and true is one of those things that doesn't come around all too often, so when it does, who the Hell are we to question the nature or morality of that love, as long as it is between two consenting adults?

So congratulations I say, and Happy Valentine's Day. I hope that the Californians don't make fools out of themselves trying to undo what's already been done, and that here in Massachusetts good sense will continue to prevail and the SJC's ruling will be allowed to stand so that P-Town City Hall will finally be able to start handing out those marriage licenses to couples who have waited far too long for what we heteros unthinkingly enjoy as a basic civil right (some have waited all their lives for this moment). So what if it isn't popular? Mixed-race marriage was considered just as abominable as gay marriage once upon a time, and truth be told there are still a lot of people out there who are uncomfortable with the idea of marrying outside of "your own kind". But the law isn't supposed to be a security blanket designed to keep us at arm's length from a world that fails to conform to our preexisting biases. Mixed-race marriage bans were struck down, state-by-state, regardless of how the majority felt about them, because although in our democracy the majority may rule, the minority nevertheless enjoys certain inalienable rights that cannot be abrogated by a simple show of hands.

This of course is true for love as it is for every other aspect of life. It is perhaps not a coincidence that this weekend we celebrate both love and country on Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day. At this moment we are embroiled in a struggle for America's soul with forces who would throw the past two centuries of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness out the window on account of fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of same-sex marriage, fear of the unknown. We're better than that as a country, though, and I think slowly but inexorably the American people are beginning to realize that living in fear is not really living at all. Only time will tell.