If we Australians ever needed a fine reminder of the foresight of the men who crafted the US Constitution and the resulting sanctity of the American Citizen's individual rights - if the comparitive legal franchise extended fairly early to Gitmo detainees like American John Walker wasn't reminder enough, that is - then this latest twist in the Gay Marriage debate is it:

Gay marriage ban unconstitutional, rules US court

A second US judge has ruled that Washington state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The decision by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks came just a month after another jurist in the city of Seattle also decided that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry if they so desire. Judge Hicks ruled that the state's Defence of Marriage Act, that was passed in 1998 limiting marriage to a contract between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional.

He said that Washington cannot grant a privilege like marriage to one group of citizens and not to others without providing a compelling reason for such discrimination. 'The clear intent of the legislature to limit government-approved contracts of marriage to opposite sex couples is in direct conflict with the constitutional intent to not allow a privilege of one class of the community that is not allowed to the entire community,' he wrote. He dismissed the state's contention that it was dependent on child-bearing couples for social stability, saying that provided no good reason for the state to ban same-sex marriage.

Read the judge's other brief comments, feel the majestic resonance of what truly makes America great - the generations-old assumptions about the limits of State power; that classical Republican notion, that maximum enfranchised inclusivity must underpin Citizenship if it's to work optimally; the Human decency and tolerance tempering a dry legal judgement; yes, the State, the rule of law - 'the Man' - actually working hard for the vulnerable individual. It's these moments that make the sillier American excesses and freedoms - the freedom to cosmetically bleach one's anus, say, or spend $120+ million making 'Waterworld', or elect Arnie Governor of California - make sense. And seem right, and worthwhile, and even essential and inseparable. If the Constitutional freedom for gays to marry also demands that anti-PC types remain Constitutionally free to abuse them, even in State and Federal Parliaments and on the airwaves, as 'filthy unnatural perversions'...then I think that's a freedom I'd be happy to accept.

Except that.

Now be grimly reminded, in the awful comparison, how easy it is to take on board the crap bits of George Bush's version of America while dipping out on the redeeming gems. How lacking in any Citizenly or legal recourse are Australia's gay couples now, when belted with precisely the same kind of excluding legislation as that now rejected by the Washington State judge? Indeed, what defence do Australian gays have any more against the kind of 'un-PC' freedom of hate-speech we heard in the Great Hall of our Parliament a few weeks ago? Truth be told this whole 'issue' was but mere passing political whim, one that started out as no more than an artificially ramped-up social wedge issue (which JH likely plagiarised from Karl Rove & Co somewhere along the line), yet almost by careering default ended up as cold, hard, black letter law, after JH's grubs and Mark Latham's jellybacks jointly rammed the resulting lobby-sectional interest Bill through Parliament without thought, debate, media coverage or any shame. And I think we can see clearly now, just surveying the on-going magnificent struggle for Human dignity and civic inclusion by Stateside gay couples, when set against our own already signed, sealed and heartlessly slammed-shut Matrimonial Oz book, how dangerous it is when an elected leader whose power should properly be filtered though the Westminster cabinet system gradually takes it upon himself (and is allowed to by his cabinet equals) to exercise it more or less unilaterally: as if he, too, was a Presidential-Commander-in-Chief-cum-Caesar with a mandate to tweak Constitutions, decide Referenda and generally skew his entire government into alignment with his personal worldview, and/or his transient political imperatives. It's a brewing disaster, because - unlike in America, where an actual physical and personnel separation of the Executive and the Legislature underscores the abstract Constitutional one and the diffusion of State power is enhanced even further by those Constitutional and Bill of Rights safety nets - if one adept politician dominates a weak Australian Cabinet for too long, he can come to see his values, views and interests, Louis the 14th style, as mirroring those of the State. Such leaders can, on little more than personal whims, then drag the entire democratic apparatus - of even apparently benign States like Oz - into dangerous territory indeed.

So it has come to pass with John Howard's Marriage Laws, in my view, and the second successful challenging of similar ones in the US by individual Citizens - and the knowledge that no such Consitutional avenue is available here - only underscores the finality of what his colleagues and the ALP have been suckered into backing. Oops, Brendan Nelson. Ooops, Phillip Ruddock. Oops, Chris Pyne and George Brandis and Amanda Vanstone and Trish Worth and Malcolm Turnbull and all the rest of you 'broad church' bleeding hearters. How does it feel to be recorded for all democratic posterity in Hansard as the soulless mob who enacted an ugly, excluding law that nobody really wanted, certainly nobody actually needed to 'protect their marriage', and that not even those wacko Yanks are prepared to cop?

Next question: when do you all - Liberal and Labor creeps, thank you - plan to fling the filthy thing off our National Books: in the first hour of the first session of the new Parliament, or the second?