Opponents of gay marriage in California and elsewhere might do well to refamiliarize themselves with the Ninth Amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Bill of Rights did not grant us any rights, rather, it recognized and enumerated some (but not all) of the rights we already have by virtue of being human beings. Far from granting any rights, the Bill of Rights affirms that the government cannot take the People's rights away. The Ninth Amendment's purpose is to acknowledge that there are other rights which are not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and to affirm that the people still have those rights, even though they aren't mentioned in the Bill of Rights.

Given this, it seems clear to me that one crucial measure of whether a right is protected by the Ninth Amendment is this: would such a right infringe on the rights of others? If it inherently constitutes, or is likely in and of itself to cause, an infringement of the rights of others, I think it's safe to say that it would not and should not be recognized as a right.

If you are married, then your marriage is between you and your partner and your god (if any). Period! Its your mutual responsibility. Anyone who claims that another couple's marriage somehow infringes on their own marriage is a coward as far as I'm concerned -- how dare you blame your own marital problems on the fact that a gay couple somewhere got married because they love one another? The "integrity of marriage" is only as good as the marriage you and your partner are a party to.

To deny other adult human beings the right to marry one another because they share gender is to infringe on their rights, which means the so-called "right" of an individual or government to enforce such a denial fails the test stated above and thus should not be recognized under the Ninth Amendment -- and is therefore no right at all.

To repeat: denying the rights of gays to marry is itself not a right under the Constitution, and thus all anti-gay marriage laws should be struck down by definition.

The format was less conducive to productive give and take than the first debate.  McCain was smart to keep the character assassinations under wraps.  He had more than a few effective jabs at Obama, but more often than not Obama's comebacks laid them firmly to rest.  McCain really looked petulant whenever he went out of his way to rag Obama at the expense of answering a question, and what struck me several times was that McCain's demeanor kept switching back and forth between that of a tough guy and that of a spoiled child.  And his constant pacing and the sheer unpredictability of his movements struck me as accurately reflecting his character.  At his best McCain was commanding in a good way.  If only he could be so consistently, but he can't,not that I've ever seen -- he's always erratic whenever you watch over any significant length of time.  Not stable or even-keeled.

Obama passed up numerous opportunities to make pointed turnabouts on McCain.  But he was very steady, sensible, authoritative, calm, articulate, the very definition of "even-keeled".  I was really struck by the question from the retired Navy petty officer -- Obama's answer was distinctly better than McCain's, and you could see by the ex-Navyman's reactions that he thought so too.  That was the very moment that Obama won the debate.

John McCain has gone so far around the bend that he appears to fully believe his own lies, as is chillingly demonstrated in his Sept. 30th interview with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register.

The way McCain insists, with barely contained rage, that he is and always has been an honest man, pure and unsullied in his truth-telling -- which is tantamount to claiming that he has never told a lie in his entire life -- is a clear sign he is utterly disconnected from reality. It's sad that McCain's torturers in Vietnam broke him; it's sadder still that he remains broken. His rage coupled with the profound shamelessness of his lying clearly demonstrate this. He is a tyrant in waiting; his is the incipient psychosis of the profoundly megalomaniacal.

I do not say these things lightly. I used to have a lot of respect for McCain. But his hiring of the very people who smeared him out of the 2000 race for the Republican nomination and his use of those same smear tactics against Obama made me lose a lot of the respect I once had for him. McCain was a different man as recently as the primaries, but ever since he hired Karl Rove's cronies to run his campaign everything has gone rapidly down hill. The Register interview made me realize that I was seeing a man who lives entirely in a reality of his own invention, a man full of wrath and with no sense of proportion or humility, a man who is borderline psychotic. I wish it were not true, but I am dreadfully afraid it is.

McCain could have used his own brokenness as a source of positive power and vision, a source of compassion and understanding, but instead he has allowed its darkness to overwhelm him, its hunger for aggrandizement to seize him for its own ends.

God help us all.