It’s been a depressing week, with the debate raging in DC over whether we should destroy the economy amid bitter political wrangling, or if we should drop it into the shitter in a spirit of heartwarming bipartisan compromise.

But there is some good and genuinely excellent news! Starting at midnight EST, the first official same-sex marriages will take place in New York. From the perspective of common decency and common sense, I can’t believe NY didn’t do this years ago. From the perspective of our state being half-choked with wingnuts just as crazy as they are anywhere else, I’m astonished it’s happening at all. But I’ll for once be optimistic and see my state not as half-lunatic, but as just slightly more than half-civilized.*

There seem to be several candidates for the first couple to be officially knotted, such as this Jewish pair from Long Island. And then there are these Western New York grandmas, who look just lovely together, and have such high hopes about the future:

Over time, this will become federal law. We know we will someday be long gone, and no one will remember who were are or what we did. But this law will be on the books. And someday, someone will fall in love, and want to get married, and they’ll go to City Hall, and no one will be standing there with ugly, venomous signs with so called “religious” messages of hate. No one will care. They’ll just be another loving couple, who want to love and care for each other for the rest of their natural lives.

Hear hear, and congratulations!

But not everyone is happy. The breathless hysterical squawking emanating from NRO is icing on the gay wedding cake, for those who enjoy dim-bulb bigot caterwauling:

New York has struck a great blow, in the name of a false “right,” against real freedom. Same-sex marriage is inseparable from authoritarianism, as we will see when New York’s Christians, Jews, and Muslims lose the religious freedom to act on the truth about marriage as they know it.

Ah, quitcherbitchin. You still have your right to carry your ugly, venomous signs! Chin up!

For the rest of us, lift a glass, throw some rice, and have some cake.

*Polling data shows more than half of New Yorkers support same sex marriage, but it did only squeak through the legislature.