Feel the Homomentum!

Texas-style:

In a first for Texas, a judge ruled Thursday that two men married in another state can divorce here and that the state's ban on gay marriage violates the U.S. Constitution.

Both a voter-approved state constitutional amendment and the Texas Family Code prohibit same-sex marriages or civil unions.

Although the case is far from settled, and the state's constitutional ban on gay marriage is a long way from being thrown out, Dallas state District Judge Tena Callahan's ruling says the state prohibition of same-sex marriage violates the federal constitutional right to equal protection.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had intervened in the two men's divorce case, arguing that because a gay marriage isn't recognized in Texas, a Texas court can't dissolve one through divorce.

Callahan, a Democrat, denied the attorney general's intervention and said her court "has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction."

It's not so much that this case brings Texas to the brink of legalized same-sex marriage, because it doesn't. It's that the decision reflects changing attitudes across the country toward same-sex marriage; this decision wouldn't have happened 10 years ago.

And then there's this: Every challenge that arises because of legal marriage in one state, which another state then refuses to recognize, exposes DOMA for the folly it is, and once DOMA's gone, the days of states banning same-sex marriage are numbered.

[H/Ts to Shakers bhastronomer and InfamousQBert.]