The Los Angeles Times today has an editorial: “Setback for marriage justice – New York and Georgia courts will be on the wrong side of history of gay marriage.”

Noting that “an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born,” Judge Robert S. Smith wrote that the state could “offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.” Never mind that childless heterosexual couples also receive legal benefits from civil marriage — or that many gay couples are raising children.

It took the Supreme Court until 1967 — 1967! — to strike down odiously racist anti-miscegenation laws. Someday we’ll look back on the anti-gay-marriage hysteria with the same revulsion. Until then, with a high court seemingly disinclined to address marriage, states such as California should take the lead.