Not a great day, but definitely a good day.  First, in DC:

The D.C. Council voted Tuesday to legalize same-sex marriage in the District….

After months of debate, the council passed the bill 11 to 2. It still must take a second vote in two weeks before the measure can go to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who has said he will sign it.

If the bill survives a required congressional review period, the District will join New Hampshire, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Massachusetts in allowing same-sex marriage.

That sounds like a done deal, assuming the Blue Dogs don’t muck up the congressional review.  Excellent.

And does everyone remember when the NJ legislature was going to legalize gay marriage during the lame duck session so Corzine could sign it, and then suddenly they weren’t? Well, it looks like a letter from 200 prominent NJ Democrats has given them a much-needed ball transplant:

An insider tells me that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo has sent a draft schedule to the Senate President’s office for next Monday which includes the bill S1967. That is the bill legalizing marriage between same sex couples in New Jersey. The Senate President must approve the bills that will be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on December 7th. So for now, it is up to Dick Codey. Should he greenlight it, that bill will finally get it’s long awaited hearing.

This is nowhere near as done a deal as DC, but it’s a helluva lot closer than it was a week ago, when there were no plans to vote at all.

I really do hope it passes in NJ.  It wouldn’t just benefit NJ; every time a state legalizes gay marriage it becomes a little more mainstream, a little less of a big deal.  The Overton Window slides another scosh to the left, and the homophobic nonsense argument that gay marriage undermines “traditional” marriage looks sillier and sillier as opposite-marriage continues to not spontaneously combust.  In short, it creates… momentum.

As the NJ letter so aptly quotes Dr. King: “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”  It can be like trying to see the curvature of the Earth sometimes, but it’s there.

Happy World AIDS Day, everybody!