It's something no sensible person would do... I wish I was married to you

It was kind of lost in the shuffle this week, what with the continuing scandals that the administration likes to create instead of actually governing, but Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York announced he will be submitting legislation to legalize gay marriage in the state. This is a very good thing, even though it stands almost no chance of passing the Republican-led New York State Senate. It's been debated how much "political capital" he should use to try to impose his will, but short of a State Senate majority, it will have to stand for the moment as a powerful but temporarily symbolic gesture. If New York can manage to pass civil unions instead, which seems likelier at the moment, and Rhode Island also joins New Hampshire in allowing them, you will basically have legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts (all efforts to overturn it have basically gone nowhere), civil unions throughout the rest of the Northeast and West Coast, and additional pressure on the more liberal states in the Midwest that have Democratic governors and state houses to possibly follow suit (that means Illinois, by the way). It would come as no shock whatsoever if a very significant percentage of the country soon has civil unions, and the continuing refusal of Massachusetts to actually break out in Armageddon will only make it more likely that states go further, not retreat. Honestly, once you've got NY and CA, you;ve basically got the cultural centers of America (Chicago would be a bonus, and call me an unreasonable optimist but I truly believe in the power of the media elite to both reflect the culture in which they find themselves and to normalize it for the rest of the country. We've all basically known that someday gay marriage will be viewed like interracial marriages are today, as inherent rights for people opposed by bigots and those who refuse to deal with the modern world, but I think it happens sooner than we think. I give it about twenty years, give or take, especially if the Supreme Court ever goes liberal by a 6-3 majority with younger justices being able to assert themselves.

One can ask, in the midst of this hopeful flight of fancy, if there is a political price to be paid. Honestly, the answer is yes, but not for Spitzer or the NY state Democrats. No, he is way too popular at the moment to be touched, and he's actually going on the offensive against State Senate Republicans for blocking campaign finance reforms. This latter move has the potential to reshape NY State politics for the first time in my lifetime, but some explanations are in order. For basically forever, the State Assembly has had a Democratic majority , and the State Senate a Republican majority. As a result, the leaders of both houses, along with the governor, sit in a room each year and basically run the state. It's a classic top-down, party boss system and in no way allows the interests of the public to be represented at all. The stability of the arrangement has been maintained by an informal, off-the-record truce, in which neither side nor the governor really interferes in the other's affairs. Thankfully, Democrats seem to have realized that with the entire Northeast trending heavily blue, this arrangement basically screws them over for no reason. Earlier this year, they actually picked off a Republican-held State Senate seat, and indications are that they might actually try to win more in 2008 for a change.

It's important to remember that dissatisfaction with the Republicans, which led to the Democratic wave in 2006, shows no signs of retreating. We've got all sorts of indictments either underway or in the works, and public opinion continues to turn against the war in a big way. Just today, it was reported that 55% of Americans agree with Harry Reid that the war is lost, so one could easily argue that no matter how much the Republicans hyperventilate about treason and such, it really does help the Democratic cause, since the war is so bloody unpopular. Call it a hunch, but I think issues like this may carry a bit more weight that Spitzer's take on gay marriage in 2008.