Watch Jon Stewart December 11, 2008March 12, 2017 MIKE HUCKABEE AND JON STEWART ON MARRIAGE Click here and see which of them you agree with. David da Silva Cornell: ‘Stewart is quite good in this exchange at articulating arguments for marriage equality in a very accessible, plainspoken way. Unfortunately, he does let Huckabee get away with making an incorrect statement as to law: Huckabee characterizes marriage in this country as being a ‘privilege,’ not a legal right, when in fact it is long settled in U.S. constitutional law – ever since Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that ended all bans on interracial marriage and expressly addressed this question – that being able to marry whom one wants is not only a civil right, it is one of the most fundamental of all civil rights. The precise – and stirring – language of Loving is always useful to have at hand when engaging ‘The Other Side’ or potentially persuadable neutrals:’ Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. NEWSWEEK MAKES THE RELIGIOUS CASE FOR MARRIAGE Here. (‘Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.’) And by the way, it’s okay for religions to prohibit gay marriage. It’s civil marriage – mundane things like state-issued marriage licenses and the taxation of health insurance benefits, not ‘holy matrimony’ – that’s in question. No one disputes the right of churches to discriminate or to predict who will and who will not be denied entrance to the kingdom of heaven. But in the meantime, can Charles and I have the same Social Security benefits you do? We pay the same tax rates. VIOLENT MOBS Meanwhile, Wayne Besen’s column takes issue with the anti-marriage groups who are complaining that gays are protesting: Pat Boone compared Proposition 8 protests to terrorist attacks on Mumbai in a column for World Net Daily titled, “Hate is hate, in India or America. Boone wrote, “Have you not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what’s happening right now in our cities?” In his op-ed, Boone also wrote, “What troubles me so deeply, and should trouble all thinking Americans, is that there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists.” I’m not sure if Boone noticed, but it was religious extremism that was responsible for the attacks in India. ☞ Wow. Are the California Supreme Court and California Legislature, that both granted Californians marriage equality – only to have it taken away by Prop 8 – terrorists, too? There were protest rallies in 300 cities after the narrow passage of Prop 8.