Today I have never been more proud to be a Californian. The California Supreme Court just legalized gay marriage, because they actually *grasp* the concept that ‘separate but equal’ is not equal at all, and that any two consenting adults deserve the right to get married, no matter WHAT their gender might be. My state ROCKS.

Richard and I sat there this morning at our respective offices, furiously refreshing the news pages and the California Supreme Court site until the ruling was posted, and then we each started just as furiously reading through the ruling, posting encouraging text snippets back and forth to each other. Wait, is this…oh, what about this…holy crap they DID IT! I sat at my desk with tears running down my face, and I thought about all the people I know and Richard knows who have now finally been granted the same rights Richard and I had all along. And I thought about my uncle and his long term partner and how unfair it was that they could never get married, and I thought about all those hateful close-minded bigoted people who will never stop fighting to mandate discrimination and I just sat there at my desk at work and I bawled. And then I sent a note to my coworkers and we had a quiet little happy squeefest online about it, and I fired off emails to my family and all over the internet you could feel the joy and the excitement everywhere you looked, and it felt good. So good. I know this isn’t the end of it, not by a long shot, especially since California’s laws are so idiotic as to allow an actual constitutional amendment to be done by nothing more than a simple majority vote on a voter-initiated ballot, so this is a fragile joy, right now, in my state. But it’s there none-the-less and right now it’s a step in the right direction, and that’s what we’re all going to hold on to, in the days ahead.