A New York appeals court ruled last week that legislators must allow same-sex couples residing in New York, that have been married in other states, to receive equitable government benefits.

Focus on the Family objected.

Bruce Hausknecht, a judicial analyst with Focus on the Family Action, said that civil marriage should be defined by voters, not by legislators or a constitution.

Voters, of course, do not generally act according to the will of any particular god — or, necessarily, any constitution. According to what once was conservative Christian and representative-republican dogma, voters acting as a group often act according to short-lived, poorly educated, or worldly passions — not high ethical or legal principles.

Focus on the Family wishes for voters to elect the nation’s married couples — not the couples themselves, nor the couples’ chosen places of worship, nor any constitutional principles of personal or religious freedom.

Family Law Attorney Don Schweitzer appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to oppose same-sex marriage. When pressed, he could not come up with a cogent or lucid reason why Californians should vote against granting gay people marriage equality. Watch the video to see how intellectually bankrupt our opponents truly are.

Also, opponents of same-sex unions were pondering a range of legal and legislative challenges to Gov. David A. Paterson’s new policy of having state agencies honor same-sex marriages that have been performed outside New York. However, such challenges are likely to fail and face an uphill fight, legal experts said.

Finally, the Los Angeles Times had an excellent editorial on this topic:

Surely the trailing edges of society will soon reflect on the resistance to this phenomenon with chagrin and more than a little embarrassment. It is bracing, after all, to realize how recently much of this nation blanched at interracial marriage, and thrilling to recognize how quickly most of us buried that prejudice, first in law, then in custom.