From Pine View Farm

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Leonard Pitts, Jr., places Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore’s recent invocation of nullification in the face of gay marriage into context. A nugget (please read the rest):

. . . there is nothing new here. History reminds us that whenever social change comes too fast for the South’s taste — which is to say, whenever social change comes — there seems to invariably arise some demagogue to decry the “tyranny” of having to obey the law and follow court orders. The South always resists.

That’s what necessitated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Freedom Rides of 1961. It’s why federal troops had to march into Little Rock in 1957. For that matter, it’s why they had to march into Richmond in 1865. The demagogues always use the same justification, always say that in denying it the right to discriminate as it sees fit, the federal government steps on the South’s “traditions.”

(snip)

Of course, “tradition” is just a smokescreen word, like “values,” “heritage,” “faith” and all the other pretty terminology opponents of marriage equality use to justify their increasingly untenable position. . . . It is, and ever has been, only about a single ugly word: bigotry. . . .

One more time, when you hear someone invoke “states’ rights,” ask, “States’ rights to do just what, precisely.”

Dollars to doughnuts you don’t get a precise answer.

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