Today's unanimous panel ruling by the Seventh Circuit striking down Wisconsin and Indiana's marriage bans is a well-written, carefully reasoned take-down of some of the ludicrous arguments that equality opponents have been making to defend their policy of discrimination. It was written by Richard Posner, a noted conservative put on the bench by Ronald Reagan, and joined by judges nominated by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Ruling on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the court summarizes its opinion nicely:

Our pair of cases is rich in detail but ultimately straightforward to decide. The challenged laws discriminate against a minority defined by an immutable characteristic, and the only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction—that same-sex couples and their children don't need marriage because same-sex couples can't produce children, intended or unintended—is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.

Judge Posner writes:

Because homosexuality is not a voluntary condition and homosexuals are among the most stigmatized, misunderstood, and discriminated-against minorities in the history of the world, the disparagement of their sexual orientation, implicit in the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, is a source of continuing pain to the homosexual community.

He carefully considers the argument put forward by the states that marriage is restricted to one man and one woman to benefit children. Among the many ways this argument fails to hold water:

But then how to explain Indiana's decision to carve an exception to its prohibition against marriage of close relatives for first cousins 65 or older—a population guaranteed to be infertile because women can't conceive at that age? [Wisconsin also bans first cousins from marrying unless the woman is over 55 or where the couple presents a doctor's affidavit saying one of them is permanently infertile.] If the state's only interest in allowing marriage is to protect children, why has it gone out of its way to permit marriage of first cousins only after they are provably infertile? … Elderly first cousins are permitted to marry because they can't produce children; homosexuals are forbidden to marry because they can't produce children. The state's argument that a marriage of first cousins who are past child-bearing age provides a "model [of] family life for younger, potentially procreative men and women" is impossible to take seriously.

With regard to the commonly heard refrain, echoed by attorneys for Indiana and Wisconsin, that courts should respect democratically-enacted bans on marriage by same-sex couples, Judge Posner points out what should be obvious to anyone who claims fealty to the United States Constitution:

Minorities trampled on by the democratic process have recourse to the courts; the recourse is called constitutional law.

Courts exist to enforce the Constitution against those who would subvert it. And that drives the right crazy.