By Brad Friedman on 3/29/2013, 9:50pm PT  

In 2004, in one of our earliest posts on this site (our 15th, in fact) we declared "gay marriage" to be a "done deal".

Six years later, in late 2010, after a number of good court decisions in the week or two prior, largely in regard the military's now-defunct discriminatory "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, we wrote:

The good news is: the haters have lost. The question which played such an enormous --- if entirely trumped up --- role in our Presidential elections just 6 years ago has been all but finally settled.

Well before the end of this decade (and likely far sooner than that, perhaps even before the end of Obama's first term in office), marriage equality for gays and lesbians will be recognized in every state in the union, and homosexuals will be as welcome in our nation's military as African-Americans.

It's over. The good guys have won. In these quiet victories of rights over wrongs, we can all take some quiet comfort, even in these maddening, ugly days.

The bad guys may not have come to terms with it yet, they may not have even noticed yet, but they have lost.

Well, as of this week, it looks like "the bad guys" finally have noticed and are in the process of coming to terms with it...

On Tuesday, Bill O'Reilly, long a foe of marriage equality, finally admitted on his own show that "The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals. That's where the compelling argument is. 'We're Americans, we just want to be treated like everybody else.'"

"That’s a compelling argument.," he reiterated. "And to deny that, you’ve got to have a very strong argument on the other side. And the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible."

Without reminding his viewers about his previous position, he declared, "The gay marriage thing, I don’t feel that strongly about it one way or the other. I think the states should do it. ... New York has it now. I live in New York, New York has it, I'm fine with it. I want all Americans to be happy, I do."

Well, good for him for finally being right, even if he has too outsized of an ego to admit how long he's been wrong.

But the deal was finally done on Thursday, when Rush Limbaugh, the national arbiter of Republicanism, finally saw the writing on the wall...

Right-wing radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh threw up the white flag on Thursday, conceding that no matter how the Supreme Court rules on Proposition 8 or the Defense of Marriage Act, both of which it considered this week, gay marriage "is now inevitable."

"This issue is lost," he proclaimed. "I don't care what the Supreme Court does, this is now inevitable."

Limbaugh went on to say that the inevitability of marriage equality was only "because we lost the language on this." So he's still got a bit of denial to deal with. But, nonetheless, even El Rushbo now concedes that rights --- and the Constitution --- have won, and he has lost in his fight against both, yet again.

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Article Categories: Bill O'Reilly, Rights And Freedoms, U.S. Constitution, Rush Limbaugh, Marriage Equality, Bush Legacy