On Wednesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Court sided with logic, compassion and fairness when it overturned a state ban on gay marriage.

Gay couples have lived in committed, cooperative relationships and raised children in them longer than time could know. Some open shops, start newsletters or create works of art together. Others are investment bankers, teachers, doctors and farmers. Gay couples are as diverse as heterosexual couples, and one could argue, equally as likely to have a successful marriage and raise healthy children.

I’ve honestly never understood the conservative outcry against gay marriage. Inflated religious-righters clutch their hands to their chests and moan to the heavens every time this country inches closer to granting the gay community its full roster of civil rights.

I’m sorry, y’all, but marriage isn’t in good shape now, left in the hands of heteros. The divorce rate has consistently been estimated between 50 and 60 percent for the last several years. Women are beaten, children are molested and estranged parents become kidnappers all with the sanctity of marriage protected by reserving it for the breeder set.

Is marriage in trouble? Yes. I’m not a fan of it myself, but I could see why someone would want to do it. And I could see why those who do espouse the values of state-sanctioned relationships would want to keep it a healthy, productive, thriving institution. But slamming the metaphorical door in the faces of gay couples accomplishes nothing in the way of protecting the institution of marriage.

Maybe if the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Life and Family Coalition, the Ku Klux Klan and other gay-hating ideologues are serious about making marriage a rock upon which the harmony of this country rests, they could take a goddamn look at what’s already wrong with it instead of how gay folks are going to screw it up.

Let’s see: If I chose to marry some dude, he could beat the crap out of me, stop short of killing me a few times, and I would have little legal recourse. If we both worked and had children, odds are I would still be forced to be the primary child-raiser, dish-washer, dinner-cooker, etc., despite how much money I make or how many hours I work.

Add to that the fact that our nation’s economy and work structure are not conducive to either parent staying home with the kids for any length of time and you don’t have the gem of loving and cooperation that conservative schmucks fancy marriage to be.

Why not focus on that?

Deep down, opponents of gay marriage just don’t like gay people. Their stomachs churn when they think about us having sex, anger burns in them when they see us openly enjoying ourselves and they are shaken to the core when their own children turn out to be gay.

They don’t want our dirty gay fingers in their down-home, shoo-fly marriage pie.

I don’t think I need to write about how gay relationships are legitimate. I won’t make a bulleted list of all the reasons gay couples are deserving of full marriage rights. One reason speaks definitively to this issue: gay couples are Americans deserving of full civil rights. Marcye Nicholson-McFadden, one half of a lesbian couple suing the state of New Jersey for marriage rights, said it best in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune:

“This is about civil rights, not special rights, and those couples in Massachusetts are the black kids who walked into the white schools in the South. I get chills just thinking about it.”