So Virginia’s new attorney general, Mark Herring, has announced he will not defend his state’s ban on gay marriage. He has made a personal journey and concluded that doing so would be inconsistent with constitutional guarantees and common decency. He cited Loving v Virginia as precedent, saying basically that the Supreme Court did not declare that blacks and whites had the freedom to marry, but that people do. As far as Mr. Herring is concerned, gays are people. First.
Good for him. I suspect this is an issue that has arrived. More and more states are reviewing the legality of such bans and finding that, ethically and morally, they do not stand up, personal prejudice notwithstanding. …