Via the Free Beacon, I think it was Dan McLaughlin of Red State who tweeted after last week’s SSM decision was released, “Now the contest begins to see who’ll be the angriest winner.” His point was that, for a movement that’s been unstoppable culturally over the past 10 years, there’s a curiously strong impulse towards nastiness in some lefties’ reaction to each new victory. With this remark from George Takei, I think it’s safe to say the contest is now over.

Takei’s overreacting to a point Thomas made in response to Kennedy’s idea that state recognition of gay marriage is at base about recognizing the equal dignity of gay citizens. Your dignity doesn’t depend on what the state thinks of you, countered Thomas. Each life has inherent dignity that the state can’t destroy even with severe depredations. It can tell you that you’re property but God says you’re a human being, and that’s that. His point was a variation on Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous line that “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” which is simplistic in an extreme case of oppression like slavery or internment but valuable as a defense of the essential humanity of exploited people. All Thomas was saying was that dignity is a matter of natural rights, not positivism. Gays have dignity whether the state acknowledges their marriages or not. But because he came out the wrong way on gay marriage and because he is, after all, Clarence Thomas, America’s most famous black conservative and therefore the country’s supreme race traitor in the eyes of the left, Takei not only willfully misunderstands his intentions but slides easily into a nasty racial crack about Thomas’s black authenticity. He’ll pay no price for it, needless to say. If anything, this is high-five material for jerkoffs who’ve already moved past last week’s landmark ruling and are busily gaming out how to bust tax exemptions for Catholic soup kitchens or whatever.