I'm one of those people who think that the SJC gay marriage decision is no big deal. The world won't stop turning and society isn't going to come undone. But that's me. There are lots of other people, on both sides of the issue, that feel otherwise, and strongly so.

Reading this post by Susan Ryan-Vollmar at Media Nation makes me wonder about how the impasse can be resolved. She takes the position that the issue is a moral one and we should reject legalist distractions and arguments.

As much as any issue has a moral dimension, she's right. But the reality is that this is a legal issue: it's about the law regarding gay marriage. And as such it's also a political issue.

I understand the argument that past civil rights advances would not have happened if they were subjected to majority vote, and that's certainly true, but the fact is that they happened and they weren't enacted through moral enlightenment; in every case there was a fundamental (not parliamentary) legal rationale --that was perhaps guided by moral principle.

A suggestion that we should subvert the legal system to achieve subjective moral ends is tempting but very dangerous.