Some Supreme Court cases get more attention than others. This week a dynamic duo of cases involving gay marriage reaches the court, hogging all the SCOTUS focus. (And obscuring otherwise newsworthy items like the court trying on Monday to determine whether it’s cool for big pharmaceutical companies to delay competition from generic manufacturers–by paying the rival companies NOT to produce the cheaper drugs. Which of course means you can’t buy the cheap ones, even after the patent is vulnerable, because nobody will make them: it wouldn’t be profitable.)
But back to whether the federal government must honor individual states’ decisions to allow same-sex couples to marry. Or whether it must intercede when they don’t allow it (and strike down California’s Prop 8). It should do both, of course, and it will–even if it’s not this week and not SCOTUS that makes it happen–but there is some whiplash as a result of how fast opinions are moving on this formerly divisive subject. Well more than half of Americans now favor the idea of having a nice gay married couple live next door–or at least having them live together happily somewhere. And it’s not clear that 60% of Americans have really agreed on anything since a poll showed Bert Lahr was an excellent lion. So the fix is in: same-sex marriage change is inevitable and it will be swift. But just like more traditional couples, when they get sick, gay couples too are going to want those generic pills. Will they be available?