Will Durst: Gay marriage ruling about rights, not values

Just when you thought we were settling in for another typical, slow August news month, along comes Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to overturn California's Proposition 8. The one that banned same-sex marriages. Did you get that? He overturned the ban. Loosed the bonds. Broke the chains. And reopened a can of worms the size of the Louisiana Purchase.

According to this federal judge's persuasive opinion, restricting freedoms is bad. Hence, gay marriage is good. The 136-page judgment finds that discriminating because of religious convictions violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The message is, if you don't believe people should marry someone of the same sex, then go right ahead and don't marry someone of the same sex. That part hasn't changed. No one will be dragged from their beds and forced to wear collared shirts or attend avant-garde theater productions. However, if you don't believe other people should be able to marry someone of the same sex - tough.

In this country one group of people is not allowed to stand in the way of other people's happiness simply because they don't dig it. Personal beliefs have nothing to do with how your neighbors get to live their lives. This is not about values, it's about rights. You don't want the Taliban telling your wife she has to walk five paces behind you in public while dressed as a grieving beekeeper, now do you?

And though Walker's court is in San Francisco, this was not a flaming liberal ruling. The man was nominated by Ronald Reagan and appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush, for crum's sake. So, if same-sex marriages ever do become law of the land, the opposite-sex marriage crowd is going to have to give a lot of the credit to Reagan and Bush.

Of course this ain't over by a long shot. The status quo is frothing in their insistence that people continue to live like them, exactly like them and nobody else but them. So help them God.

The judge did stay his own decision postponing further gay marriages in California, while five states and D.C. have licensed same-sex marriages and numerous states have banned them. So the situation is foggier than a lighthouse near the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed straight into the wheelhouse of the Supreme Court. Is Perry v. Schwarzenegger destined to be Dred Scott or Brown v. Board of Education? Robes and minds are being laundered and starched as we speak.

In America, all of us have the same basic human right to be miserable.

Besides, isn't the whole idea to keep gays from having sex? What better way than marriage do you know? Your witness, Mr. Burger.

• Will Durst is a San Francisco-based political comedian.