Marriage Equality, Massive Resistance, and Moral History (UPDATED) (FURTHER UPDATED)

So some counties in California are refusing to grant any marriage licenses so they don't have to grant any to gays. [1] There was a word for a practice much like this in the South after Brown v. Board of Education: Massive Resistance. [2] Segregationists shut down entire school systems rather than suffer the indignity of integrating them. Prince Edward County, Virginia, operated no public schools between the years of 1958 and 1964.

It was all about the children, you see.

Of course, the people who thought like that then—here's an excellent article [3] on one of them, Lester Maddox—are now looked upon as history's losers, as monsters, as embarrassments, and have no defenders. Now, every conservative claims to have always been on the opposite side of the Lester Maddoxes of the day. The people who think like this now will look just as bad to history as Maddox did then. I try to mention this every time I speak to a conservative audience: that I pity them. They should take care to stay off the record when they oppose basic human rights, because it will eventually come back to bite them on the ass. [4]

But ultimately, I'm not worried about them (though if I were a Christian, I'd worry for their immortal souls), because, twenty years down the road, most will successfully maintain they were for marriage equality [5] all along. Moral relativism has its advantages.

[UPDATE: a Butte County resident [6] suspects I, and the Wall Street Journal, may have overreacted, and that the reason the county isn't performing marriages is separate from, and preceeds, the Supreme Court decision.

Whatever turns out to be the case, conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage still resemble Lester Maddox.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: I may have spoken too soon [7] about speaking too soon. [8]]