“When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest. … The Court is not unaware of the dramatic impact of its ruling, but it must not shy away from deciding significant legal issues when fairly presented to it for judicial determination. As others assessing the constitutionality of preventing same-sex marriage note, justifying the continued application of a classification through its past application is ‘circular reasoning, not analysis,’ and that it is not persuasive.”

“I hadn’t seen it. I’ll be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven’t seen the movie. I’ve heard about it. I hope you go – uh, you know, heh-heh, heh-heh – I hope you go back to the ranch and the farm is what I was about to say. I hadn’t seen it.”

“[T]here is no progress forward – intellectual, spiritual, sexual or otherwise – without a concomitant blood-curdling scream from the power brokers and the religiously terrified to hold it all back. Change brings fear. Sexuality brings confusion. For every person who has his rigid homophobic ideology shattered by Brokeback [Mountain]’s emotional hammer, there is a confused neocon who redoubles his efforts to replant it.”