Gay Marriage, as I’ve noted many times, is not a big issue to me.  As I’ve said a’plenty, I don’t care if gays can sign a contract that binds them to share property, grants them power of attorney, and regulates the terms of any dissolution.  If I ever marry again, on the other hand, I will not get a government license, because to me, marriage is a religious thing, ordained by God, and not for the blessing of some AFSCME employee who needs a stronger deodorant.

No, there are many issues vastly more important than gay marriage.  We are at war.  Our civil liberties are being infringed from without and within.  Our economy is being, for lack of a less inflammatory term, sabotaged from within by our own government.  Our state is relatively healthy, but we are not an island; and two islands in Minnesota, the Twin Cities and Duluth, are resting on long-lost laurels and starting the spiral into becoming Cold Flints.

All of these problems need serious responses.

And at the root of all the serious responses, when you factor out all the variables related to the individual situations, is this; we need to eliminated the “progressivism” from power in state and national  politics.

Let me be clear, here; I get alongwith liberals.  Some of my best friends and relatives are libs; they vote progressive; they drive Volvos.  But they’re human beings, mostly with redeeming qualities.  This isn’t personal.

It’s business.  “Progressivism” is a debilitating social cancer that must be destroyed (politically speaking).  It’s a total cultural war.  And the price of losing, if you are a conservative, is complete extinction for our society, our freedom, our prosperity, our way of life.

At the root of every real answer is one imperative; at the state and national level, “progressivism” must not only be defeated, but relegated to backwater pariah status.

And the way you do that is to expose to the people the pustulent rot behind the happy talk.

The people don’t want judges or legislatures to define marriage for them.  It’s not even close.

The DFL is paralyzed with fear that their vote against allowing marriage to go to a referendum in 2012 will be splashed all over campaigns in 2012 – and that for all their happy talk, it will cost them votes.  Tens of thousands of them.  Because they can’t call everyone who votes against them a bigot.  This issue is going to cost the DFL, and cost it huge.

Don’t get me wrong – rendering the Democrats into a third party is going to take more than just canny takes on wedge issues.  But they count.  And we need to use them.  Rahm Emmanuel once quipped “never waste a crisis”; the corollary for a conservative is “never waste a popular mandate”.

Every opportunity it takes to crush the “progressives” – stripping mandatory union deductions, holding them to votes that will get them crucified outside the metrocrat core, and of course most of all reviving the economy and resurrecting liberty – is a gift from above, not to be wasted.

Let’s hoist them on this petard.  Light it.  And watch the fireworks.