Judge's immoderate ruling on gay marriage is no help

Gentlemen, grab your bridal veils. Ladies, seize your cummerbunds.

Better run down to City Hall in less than a New York minute and file for those marriage licenses. This may be your last chance for some time to come.

Last week's ruling by New York State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan that the Empire State law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution is, if nothing else, empirical. Wasn't San Francisco's great experiment in same-sex marriage a resounding success? Now that we're about to commemorate the first anniversary of Mayor Gavin Newsom's same-sex twosomes lining the steps to City Hall, isn't it time to revivify that scene?

Uh, yeah, if you're the type of progressive whose idea of a great time includes stacking your favorite political causes neatly in the back of a pickup truck, aiming the bubba-mobile at a brick wall and tying down the accelerator pedal to a speed of no less than 60 mph.

Far be it for a mere pundit to fathom the sophisticated legal thinking that led Ling-Cohan to craft her immoderate opinion and to decorate it with neon "Overrule Me" signs. But perhaps one of the following beliefs motivated her: She does not believe that George W. Bush has bulldozed enough roads through federal lands; she does not believe the U.S. Supreme Court is close enough to overturning Roe v. Wade; she DOES believe the United States should bomb Iran's suspected nuclear facilities (whether they exist or not) and, while heading East, we should also invade North Korea.

After all, as hyperbolic as these possibilities sound, they are just the type of overreactions on the right her unhinged-left ruling invites. As the Democratic Party examines the events that led to last November's clobbering, it is delicately trying to decide which cultural icons to jettison. The conventional suspects are: gun control, gay marriage and abortion. But two of these issues aren't nearly as helpful to Republicans as the third.

The Democratic Party has long silenced its opposition to gun control. Bill Clinton and John Kerry both performed the now-requisite and ceremonial duck-slaughter routine during their presidential campaigns. The federal assault-weapons ban expired last fall with few Democrats whimpering for renewal. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada is pro-gun.

The apparent incoming chair of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, won the National Rifle Association's endorsement when he ran for governor of Vermont. So forget about gun control — it's so 20th century. The NRA (and the GOP) won.