It’s as if they’ve been infected with some offshoot of the Anti-Life Equation.

However, those people and places are regrettably outnumbered across vast swathes of the region. (And it’s not about mere corruption… as you point out, that can be found anywhere, and I’d be the last person to defend the state of Illinois in that regard.) What I’m talking about here are the political and cultural attitudes that are all too widespread, all too commonplace below the Mason-Dixon line… attitudes that frequently haven’t yet crawled out of the nineteenth century.

Why? I honestly don’t know. There are historical and economic and religious and educational and all sorts of other factors at play; it’s an overdetermined phenomenon. Nor is it strictly limited to the south (e.g., consider Tom Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas, asking many of the same questions about his home state)… but if you look at a map of the “red states,” or those with the lowest educational attainment, or the any number of other unfortunate indicators, the south clearly stands out as dominating the trendlines.

(And what’s worse, in a bitterly ironic sense, is that the reactionary throwbacks who are so overrepresented down there don’t hesitate at all to toss casual calumnies at the rest of the country. They’re constantly talking about “San Francisco liberals” or “East cost elites” or northerners/urbanites in general as if the very geographical references were intrinsically insulting… as if there were something unsavory about being associated with the parts of America that provide the decided majority of the country’s cultural and economic infrastructure, educational institutions, tax revenues and more. But I digress…)

Anyway, as for the legal implications of the divorce case, I’m not quite as optimistic as you. I’d like to think that the “full faith and credit” clause would shoot down any state’s failure to recognize a same-sex marriage (or any other kind) from another state… but thus far the federal courts have declined to interpret it that way, for reasons that remain inscrutable. Look at it logically and DOMA should have forced this issue years ago, but the USSC has refused to accept cert on any case that would require it to rule on the matter… just as it’s refused to apply the equal protection clause in the way logic and precedent suggest. I think the main thing that’ll bring change on equal marriage is plain old shifting demographics (more young people, fewer old ones), long before the courts find the backbone to deal with it.

As for the Texas divorce case, I’m really glad it’s happened. Maybe this will force the gay marriage issue before the Supreme Court. Even though this is a pretty conservative court, I think they have to allow equal rights to everyone. They can’t just throw this back on the states because if one state doesn’t recognize another’s license, then a whole heckuva lotta people are gonna be in trouble. Your thoughts on this?