The night of the Bush v. Gore decision stands out as one of the worst days of my life. Not only was a severe miscarriage of justice performed by an activist Supreme Court specifically to strip the rightful winner of the Presidency of his victory, but on that same evening I was also in the hospital with an unrelenting case of food poisoning, and I had a college final the next morning that I absolutely could not miss. It was a combination to be vividly remembered for all the wrong reasons.
From that moment on and for many years thereafter, the name of Ted Olson, the Solicitor for George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore case, was anathema. The mere mention of his name brought feelings of severe anger and resentment. Yes, I'm referring to this Ted Olson:
Ted Olson addresses a crowd of marriage equality supporters in West Hollywood after Judge Walker's ruling on August 4 striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional
And if you had told me that this same Ted Olson, less than a decade later, would be feted with adulation by an adoring crowd in one of the most progressive cities in America and treated, in the imagery of David Dayen, to a receiving line in the fashion of a victorious candidate, I would have told you outright that you were crazy.
But it happened. I was there to see it. And nothing could be more symbolic of the history that was made yesterday by Judge Vaughn Walker's unequivocal excoriation of Proposition 8, which sought make discrimination against the LGBT community a permanent blight on the landscape of California's constitution.
Once the question is settled whether Judge Walker will issue a stay of his decision pending appeal, marriage equality will once again be the law of the land in California. But even though LGBT couples were able to marry legally in California before, something feels different now. Previously, the protracted fight for marriage equality felt like a series of struggles for budding piecemeal gains that were usually crushed by concerted campaigns from the opposition.
Not any more. Ted Olson joined with his archrival David Boies--the solicitor for Al Gore in that other infamous case--to form a legal dream team that crossed ideological lines in its shared pursuit of the American value of equal protection under the law. Supporters of marriage equality should be grateful enough that this dedicated pair of brilliant legal minds convinced Judge Walker that the discrimination inherent in Proposition 8 was a violation of the 14th amendment--but the true measure of their accomplishment runs deeper than that. In so doing, Olson and Boies systematically annihilated every single possible argument brought forth by opponents of equality that there is a compelling state interest in marriage discrimination.
The fact is, there is no such compelling interest. We may have known this already in our hearts. We may have tried to communicate this to voters who in some states have held the fate of marriage equality in their hands. But now it's a matter of public record, in the form of a devastating 138-page legal opinion from a federal judge appointed by George H. W. Bush. And the major point is this:
There is no rational basis for marriage discrimination.
Yesterday was a truly historic day. Not just because the side of equality came away victorious from a battle in this protracted fight. Not just because an unlikely pair of lawyers banded together to make it possible. But simply because yesterday--to paraphrase the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King--we saw the long moral arc of history bend irrevocably a little more towards justice. And that's what progressive history is all about.