Hey, is it unfair of me to snicker when I read that Mitt Romney, the Mormon governor of Massachusetts, wants to add an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman?

(Yeah, I know, it's a cheap shot -- even though Mitt is the son of former Michigan governor George Romney, whose grandfather, according to The Washington Post, "emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and children after Congress outlawed polygamy.")

In any event, the Massachusetts ruling today seems like a good victory, but I wonder if it changes much. The court gave the legislature six months to write a law that jibes with the state's ban on gender discrimination; the result could be a straights-only "marriage protection" amendment to the state constitution -- or, conversely, perhaps a law allowing civil unions that aren't quite marriages, in which case Massachusetts will be another Vermont, but not another Canada. Full equality will still not have been achieved in even a single state.

On the other hand, I bet Karl Rove was praying for a ruling extending full marriage rights to gay people in the Bay State, in time for the '04 elections. I bet he's deeply, deeply disappointed.