Rovism's last gasp

Republicans are apparently planning a wave of anti-gay initiatives as a diversionary tactic and wedge issue for the 2008 elections. If the definitive trait of Karl Rove's brand of politics was the use of divisiveness and demonization to win short-term tactical victories at the price of long-term strategic disaster for the party, it seems that his spirit animates them still. Even if it works for this election, it will just get them even further out on a limb from which they will eventually need to climb down in order to escape embarrassment ten or twenty years from now, as those who opposed the Civil Rights movement or interracial marriage decades ago had to do.

The comments sum up the whole debate over gay marriage in microcosm. If civil unions don't guarantee all of the same legal rights as marriage, including at the federal level, then they are not truly a substitute for marriage and homosexuals are still being discriminated against. And if they do -- well, if the "separate but equal" water fountains are truly equal in every way, why not just let everybody drink from the same ones?