Truce? What Truce?

Back when the Republican field of contenders for the presidential nomination was vast, so vast that it contained both serious and not-so-serious candidates, one of these wanna-be presidents, North Carolina governor Mitch Daniels to be specific, was quoted as saying that whoever wins in 2012, the president "would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while." For a while, that is, until the current economic issues were addressed.

 

An interesting point. This might have been one that some Republicans would have loved to have had even before the General Election given the circumstances that gave the Oval Office to the black president for the second time. Culture wars ruled the day and decided the election.

But now that the election is decided, it is now apparent that the fervent wish of Mitch Daniels is not going to come to fruition anytime soon, and this time it isn’t the politicians who are stirring the pot.

It’s the Supreme Court.

What better time to take up the dual question of the unconstitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the ballot measure passed in 2008 that forbid marriage between same sex couples, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a similar federal law?

We’re all set to go over the fiscal cliff as Dems and Reps get into a staring contest watching for who is going to blink first. We’re all set to get another credit rating reduction by Moody when the issue of raising the debt ceiling comes before congress once again. We still have all of these problems, but there appears to be no truce in the culture wars now or in the immediate future.

And it’s not like we didn’t try.

Seemingly SCOTUS is operating in another dimension than the rest of us.

But don’t get me wrong. I welcome the declaration of DOMA as unconstitutional based on Equal Protection, and I will love it when the hated Prop 8 gets crushed and cast on the garbage heap of bad laws as I predict will happen. These days you can’t find many people on either side of the aisle that still thinks discrimination against gays is a grand idea except for the super-religious. The winds are blowing in a new direction as homophobes die and the young come of voting age.

I am looking for a huge reconciliation among us in the coming years vis-à-vis sexual orientation. This is not the beginning … that has already begun. I think it is the beginning of the end.

So we can all say to Mitch McDaniel: we don’t need your stinking truces.