Massachusetts: The Gay Vegas

Cotton Mather must be rolling in his grave:

On Tuesday, the State Senate voted to repeal a 1913 law that prevents Massachusetts from marrying out-of-state couples if their marriages would not be legal in their home states. The repeal, which passed with no objections on a voice vote, is expected to pass the House later this week. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat and a supporter of same-sex marriage whose 18-year-old daughter recently disclosed publicly that she is a lesbian, has said he will sign the repeal. . . .
The law, believed to have been designed to uphold other states' bans on interracial marriage, was invoked in 2004 by Gov. Mitt Romney, a same-sex marriage opponent who said he did not want to make Massachusetts "the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage."

Quick points:

• Voice vote -- Spineless wimps who don't want to put their votes on the record for the people to see.
• Lesbian daughter -- Isn't that pretty much mandatory for 18-year-olds in Massachusetts nowadays? Except for the infamous teen sluts of Gloucester, I mean.
• Mitt Romney -- Notice the way they worked him into the story, just making sure to tag him as a homophobe in case he gets tapped as GOP running mate.

The irresistible logic of "progress" is a fascinating thing to watch. "Gay marriage" -- an unheard-of idea just a few years ago -- is now opposed only by bigoted troglodytes. This all seems vaguely familiar:

In our day, innovations march with so rapid a stride that they quite take away one's breath. The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is to-day the audacious reform, and will be tomorrow the accomplished fact.

Once you accept "progress" and other such radical abstractions as fundamental principles, insisting that custom and tradition must always yield to theory, you have weighed anchor and cast off, and the ultimate destination is destruction.

Of the folly of "progress," Chesterton said it best: "I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday." Burke especially scorned the radical notion of moral progress:

We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress among us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité -- ah, yes, and the Goddess of Reason! Listen closely, friend, and you can hear those tumbrels on their way to the guillotine.