A supreme awakening.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: VOX POPULIST - On same sex marriage

From 1956 until 2010, CBS television's daytime lineup included America's longest-running soap opera, As the World Turns. But times change, and now a real-life human drama of profound importance has debuted in America, titled As the Generations Turn.

It's the inspiring story of our society's ongoing struggle to evolve toward dignity and mutual respect. The moment came on June 26, when Justice Anthony Kennedy proclaimed from the ornate chamber of the Supreme Court: "The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty."

Kennedy and Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor voted to make this higher level of inclusiveness the law of the land, but they are not its producers. Rather, the court's ruling that states can no longer ban same-sex marriages is the culmination of generations of painful struggle by brave gay and lesbian activists and advocates.

This democratic evolution literally came out of America's closet, rising up from only a few neighborhoods at first but then entering the consciousness of today's youth. Rejecting the shibboleths, ignorance, fears, and bigotry that have previously permitted such discrimination, the nation's young people have, in a remarkably short time, changed the nation's consciousness.

The true Supremes are the people themselves, and it's their awakening to enlightenment that has transformed marriage equality from taboo to simple justice.

Unfortunately, not everyone has evolved on the issue of equality in our Land of the Free. The Supreme Court's ruling has set off a cacophony of howling hyperbole by the GOP's far-out presidential wannabes.

"I will not acquiesce to an imperial court," blustered political huckster...