NOBODY DOES IT BETTER: MASSACHUSETTS SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT JUSTICE JOHN M. GREANY'S CONCURRING OPINION IN THE LANDMARK DECISION.

Justice Greaney, in an opinion concurring with the majority, took the
unusual step of describing how he hoped citizens would respond to the
court's decision. Even opponents of same-sex marriage, he said, should do
more than offer "grudging acknowledgment of the court's authority."
Same-sex couples, he wrote, are "our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends"
who volunteer in schools and "worship beside us in our religious houses."
"We share a common humanity and participate together in the social
contract that is the foundation of our Commonwealth," Greaney wrote.
"Simple principles of decency dictate that we extend to the plaintiffs, and
to their new status, full acceptance, tolerance, and respect. We should do
so because it is the right thing to do."

Tradition and religious belief should command respect, Greaney
also wrote, "but as a matter of constitutional law, neither the mantra of
tradition, nor individual conviction, can justify the perpetuation of a
hierarchy in which couples of the same sex and their families are
deemed less worthy of social and legal recognition than couples of
the opposite sex and their families."

As the culture war heats up, and we hear more of the shrill, coldhearted
and hateful diatribes of the morally bereft who like the Taliban and other
Islamic fundamentalists, hide behind religion to shroud their unrelenting
need to control the social agenda such that it protects their hegemony
and fear-based ignorance, we should take heart in Justice Greany's remarks.

Read it again:
"Simple principles of decency dictate that we extend to the plaintiffs, and
to their new status, full acceptance, tolerance, and respect. We should do
so because it is the right thing to do."