Boy isn't this quite the topic, lately?

Witness John Stewart destroying a hapless Bill Bennett in a debate on gay marriage.

From Crooks and Liars' comments, "I think for most of us-we're so used to these right wing talking heads debating against lame duck liberals on television that always get bull dozed by personalities such as Bennett; we are then amazed how effortlessly Stewart handles these guys." It is amazing, and it is certainly a depressing reminder of just how pathetically the left-of-centre and even centrist views in the United States are represented. I can count on one hand the pundits who are able to stand up to blowhards like O'Reilly, Bennett and Coulter; namely, Jon Stewart and Al Franken, and occassionally James Carville.

Stewart puts it so well. Observe the following exchange:

Bennett: Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.

Stewart: I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Perfect, no?

Moving on, love him or hate him (and a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum do both) Andrew Sullivan is really at his most eloquent when advocating on this issue:

"Having attended [a gay wedding] last year and basically bawled through the whole thing, I know [how life-altering it is]. It is life-altering; it is ennobling; it's experientially more intense than anything most gay people have ever experienced. It heals emotional wounds many gay people don't even know we bear. And that's why some want to keep it from us. They want to keep us from those feelings of being one with our own families; they want to keep us outside the society we grew up in; they want to deny us the love and support heterosexuals take for granted. Marriage humanizes gay people and shows us in the context of love and commitment, rather than merely sex. This corrodes the far right's attempt to portray us as "subhuman" or "objectively disordered" or "sinners". That's why they are so adamant on keeping us as second class citizens. But we have to trust the good sense and ultimate tolerance of most Americans. They have every right to be leery of such a change; and we have a duty to explain and argue and persuade them why they're wrong. Person by person, state by state. But it's great, I might add, to be getting so much support from so many straight people as well. Thanks, Jon Stewart. We won't forget who stood with us in this."

Finally, the gay marriage ban that the far-right is trying to get passed in the Senate failed. It wasn't even close:

"A July 7, 2006 cloture vote on the amendment failed in the Senate 49-48. Sixty votes in favor of cloture were needed to move the bill forward and force a vote on the amdenment's passage in the Senate, which would have required a two-thirds majority."

Even with a much-increased majority in the Senate, the Republicans couldn't even get the numbers on that vote to budge from the last time they did it knowing it would fail (in 2004, conveniently also an election year.)

Oh, I wish they were voting on gay marriage in the House of Commons right now, too. It would be so wonderful to watch that one crash and burn as well.