While Obama dicks around on the DADT issue, we have watched Maine step backward, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri veto equality, and most recently, the New York senate vote no on same-sex marriage.

But things will change.

Every new generation is more progressive than the previous generation. It took until the 18th century for the abolitionist movement to grow in strength. Today, you would be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't agree that slavery is inhumane and morally wrong.

It took until 1920 for the United States to pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allowing all women to vote. It is mind-boggling to most people today that it would take that long to grant a right that shouldn't have even required debate.

I have written before how miscegenation laws were still on the books as recently as the late 1960's.

In 1967, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving got married.

They went home to Virginia, there to be rousted out of their bed one night by police and charged with a felony. The felony was that Mildred was black and Richard was white and they were therefore guilty of miscegenation, which is a $10 word for bigotry. Virginia, like a number of other states, considered cross-racial matrimony a crime at the time.

It turned out that it wasn't just the state that hated the idea of black people marrying white people. God was onboard, too, according to the trial judge, who wrote, "The fact that He separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Eventually, the Supreme Court heard the case and decided:

"Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man," the unanimous opinion striking down the couple's conviction said, "fundamental to our very existence and survival."

Most people (unfortunately, not all people) these days would find miscegenation to be completely abhorrent. And yet those laws were in force from the late seventeenth century until the Supreme Court ruling in 1967.

Contrary to what anti-gay activists claim, the fight for same-sex marriage isn't about "special rights". It is about equal rights. Every American should have the right to marry whomever he or she chooses. Love knows no rules or regulations.

America will one day be enlightened enough to extend rights to all of its citizens. There will be legalized same-sex marriage. And one day same-sex couples can stroll around in public showing their affection for each other and most people won't bat an eye.

But why sit on our asses and patiently await the inevitable? Why not fight for it now? While I remain convinced that within twenty years, there will be legalized same-sex marriage in all fifty states...I fail to see why we should wait twenty years.

Why not now?

As the New York senate prepared to vote on legalizing same-sex marriage in New York, one senator had this to say:

Openly gay NY state Senator Tom Duane: "The time is never right for civil rights. The economy, wars. The troubles we've had here in the senate. It's never ever the right time. But the paradox is, it's always the time to be on the right side of history."

And Senator Duane is correct. It is always the time to be on the right side of history.