The legal issue here isn’t that clear cut. Make an analogy: suppose the University of Virginia were to establish rules protecting pet owners. Would the state of Virginia, as the ultimate owner and manager of the University, have any authority to naysay that? Pet owners are nice people. But who’s in charge? And does the 14th amendment mean that once some agent of the State, without any chain-of-command authority to do so, has issued rules on the basis of “because I say so” protecting them, the State itself may not vindicate its authority by striking down the presumptuous rule?

The Colorado case was different. Cities have their own lawful authority. Cities may, without permission from the state, enact all sorts of ordinances. If a city wanted to forbid discrimination within city limits against pet owners, for instance by owners of rental property, they could probably do it.

But the state of Virginia might reason that it, rather than the University’s administrators, has the final say on such a question.

Special and particular protection for a class of people is always a withdrawal, in some measure, of protection for the rest. It is, thus, a withdrawal, in some measure, of protections now afforded the citizens of Virginia against discrimination on the basis of race, creed, and color. These remain on the books, but the resources which alone make such protections a reality are limited and are stretched thinner when the list of specially protected classes is enlarged. Therefore, decisions on how large to make the list are not morally or practically trivial. There are on the one-hands, and on the other-hands, to work through. The way we do this, in a Republic, is to allow elected public officials to make the calls on what the rules shall be, and then let judges and juries make the calls on whether the ball was in the net or not.

The SCOTUS has not held that states or cities must enact legislation making gays a particularly protected class. It has held only that if cities do, the state must let such laws stand.

Technical legal arguments for why something is right but it wasn’t done right make a lot of people mad, and they especially excite suspicion that the technical argument is just a smokescreen for a different agenda. But our whole edifice of “nation of laws” depends on a willingness of the public and the authorities entrusted with the management of public affairs to play by the rules.

The recently deceased Sen. Robert Byrd understood this and worked for most of his life to explain it to his colleagues and to the public.

I’m not going to down-ding your post. But think about the tension between just getting things done, and preserving a tradition and mindset of respect for the rules. Things done by the book stay done, and they win instant and widespread public consent, if not approval. Your post falls pretty squarely in the “just get it done” column, does it not?