Amy Goldstein at the Washington Post unloaded a classic sentence in describing yesterday’s rejections of so-called “gay marriage,” classic in describing a fierce ideological battle between conservatives and liberals — whoops, no make that advocates of civil rights. So one side favors civil rights, and the other is against civil rights. How neat and tidy. It’s as if using the L-word in a news account means you lose your Starbucks privileges in the Post cafeteria:

The issue has emerged as one of the country’s strongest ideological collisions, with gay rights activists fighting for marriage as a new civil right, and many conservatives, including President Bush, clinging aggressively to marriage’s traditional meaning.