I forgot to link my column Friday on the New Jersey gay-marriage-(but-not-really) decision.

Essentially, I think the court got things right. It wasn’t exactly an exercise in judicial modesty — in fact, the court asserted fairly boldly that it had the power to short-cut the democratic process if it so chose … but they decided to be nice and restrain themselves from mandating full “marriage.” (The three dissenting justices weren’t conservatives — they would have taken that next step and mandated it.)

In the end, however, given that sexual orientation is a “protected category” in New Jersey, and given that the state didn’t even argue that heterosexual-only marriage was necessary “for the kids,” I don’t see how the court could not have granted at least civil-marriage rights.

The fact that the state essentially didn’t even put up a fight is what strikes me as most interesting here. The factual and logical argument over whether excluding gays from marriage helps straight families is over. It doesn’t. The only obstacle left now is culture and time. Every day, the younger generation that accepts gays rises, and the older generation that doesn’t dies off. All that these marriage amendments represent is the last gasp of a dying bigotry.

Good riddance.