Well, this is a fascinating development in the on-going debate over same-sex marriage.

A U.S. district judge has struck down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, declaring that the state’s constitutional amendment violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one granting equal protection under the law.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/oklahoma-gay-marriage-ban-struck-down

I’ll point here that Oklahoma is arguably even redder — meaning more Republican — than Texas, which is pretty darn red.

That begs an obvious question, in my mind. Would the Texas constitutional amendment stand up under a challenge such as the one mounted in Oklahoma?

Judge Terrence Kern wrote: “Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed. It is not a scarce commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions. Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.”

Two couples of the same sex challenged the Oklahoma ban on same-sex marriage in 2004. Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment was approved by a majority vote of all Oklahomans. The judge’s ruling declares that even with a majority vote, the amended state constitution cannot supersede the U.S. Constitution.

Precisely the same thing happened in Texas, where voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. To be honest, that vote made me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, the chief of which was that the state already had a statute on the books that prohibited people of the same sex from marrying each other. The Legislature, though, decided to add some extra enforcement of that law by piling on a constitutional amendment.

Texans then said “not just ‘no,’ but ‘hell no!'” to the same-sex marriage prohibition.

Is our state’s constitutional amendment any more legitimate than the one struck down in Oklahoma?

I’m thinking it’s not.