"We need to get a grip"

I don't normally read Bob Herbert's pieces in the Times because is generally feels like I'm in the choir being berated by the preachers, but today he hits a home run.

He really takes an interesting tack on the gay marriage debate with regards to invoking God when discomfort arises.

We have a tendency to prohibit things simply because we don't like them. Because they don't appeal to us. They don't feel quite right. Or we've never done it that way before. And when things don't feel quite right, when they make us uncomfortable, we often leap, with no basis in fact, to the conclusion that they are unnatural, immoral, degenerate, against the will of God.

It's always been amazing to me how many times the will of God is invoked on what we don't understand.  But it seems that on issues of tolerance, The Omnipotent and Omniscient would be a bit more understanding of His children than they would be of each other.  Eh, what I do know, I'm a crazy heathen.

But back to Herbert's piece, because of the size restraints, he only makes one, albeit one very solid, comparison to the current gay marriage debate, that of interracial marriage.  He puts a nice time frame on the SCOTUS decision in Loving vs. Virginia (nice name, huh?)

That was in 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam and three years after the Beatles had launched their spectacular assault on American-style rock 'n' roll.

This line was great in its illustrative value to me.  I think of '67 as nearly post-civil rights movement, yet it wasn't until then that inter-racial marriage was deemed unconstitutional.  Imagine what the lines will be in 2040 regarding today.