Brad Friedman Byon 9/26/2010, 3:05pm PT

-- Brad Friedman

As horrible as things seem right now --- with sociopathic loons on one side of the aisle, cowardly failures on the other, a mainstream corporate media completely out of touch with virtually everything that matters, an economy in which everyone but the rich are gasping for air --- there is one very bright spot on which we can all take great comfort.

Rights win.

It rarely happens immediately, and almost never without a far-too-long struggle, but rights for we, the people, almost always eventually win in this nation --- usually against all odds, avarice, greed and ignorance --- but our Constitution is brilliant enough that rights eventually win out.

If you have any doubt, look no further than the latest news (video posted below) heralding the last dying gasps of institutionalized homophobia in our laws and in our military.

The good news is: the haters have lost. The question which played such an enormous --- if entirely trumped up --- role in our Presidential elections just 6 years ago has been all but finally settled.

Well before the end of this decade (and likely far sooner than that, perhaps even before the end of Obama's first term in office), marriage equality for gays and lesbians will be recognized in every state in the union, and homosexuals will be as welcome in our nation's military as African-Americans.

It's over. The good guys have won. In these quiet victories of rights over wrongs, we can all take some quiet comfort, even in these maddening, ugly days...

The bad guys may not have come to terms with it yet, they may not have even noticed yet, but they have lost. The Constitutional right to "equal protection" under the law eventually wins. And there is nothing that all of the hateful politicians, brain-dead media and disinformed citizenry can do to change that.

Just for the record, on Friday, the George W. Bush-appointed judge who had previously rejected an Air Force Major's lawsuit contesting her discharge from the service under "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT), after being outed by a third party, has reversed his previous finding and ordered that she now be re-instated. Her rights were violated when she was discharged through no fault of her own.

That follows another finding by a federal judge just two weeks ago that DADT was an unconstitutional violation of First Amendment rights, which followed the finding of a federal judge a few weeks before that California's Prop 8 constitutional ban on same sex marriage was also unconstitutional, all of which follow one finding after another by one (Conservative) court after another over the past one, two, three, six years (eg. here, here, here, here) that gay people cannot be discriminated against when it comes to their right to marriage.

In 2004, in one of our earliest postings, amidst all the phony sturm und drang about it, we told you that "gay marriage" was a "done deal". And so it is, or will soon very much be.

As bad as everything seems right now --- actually is right now --- take heart. Rights will always win. Eventually. We shall overcome.

(And there's nothing Fox "News", evil Republicans, cowardly Democrats, deviously disinformed Americans or anybody else who hates the Constitution and American Values can do about it. So have a nice weekend.)

* * *

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show breaks the news of the latest federal court finding on Friday, ordering the re-reinstatement of Air Force Major Margaret Witt and interviews her about the decision...





Maddow discusses the Constitutional matters related to the case with Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley...







