High school student: 3, "Bush's Brain": 0

Now we know why Karl Rove wouldn't let any media in for his speech at Choate Rosemary Hall (see here, at update 2). A Choate Rosemary student eclipsed the legendary intellectual luminosity of "Bush's Brain".

Lowlights (thanks to ThinkProgress):

During his controversial speech at New England prep school Choate Rosemary Hall yesterday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove was challenged by a student “to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.” Rove dodged answering her at first, saying that the issue “should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court.” But the student, Choate senior Marla Spivak, continued to press him:

Spivak kept pressing. “You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?” she asked.

Rove asked, what’s the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?

What, Spivak countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.

Then Rove invoked the Declaration of Independence before Spivak interjected that its reference to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” seemed to support her claims.

Eventually, Rove wiggled out of the debate by asking Spivak “when she planned to run for political office.

Agreed, it's easy pickings tearing apart the 'logic' of the Rethuglicans ... the ones that keep spouting the same 'logic' presented in the aptly named Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), by the Commonwealth of Virginia in an appeal to 'tradition' (and Gawd's word), and which was struck down unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court:

On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Id at 3.

In the Loving opinion, Virginia also echoed the other essential 'argument' made by opponents of gay marriage; that the Virginia laws didn't prohibit anyone from marrying, but just put restrictions on who could marry whom, which were universally and equally applicable to all:

While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State's police power, Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888), the State does not contend in its argument before this Court that its powers to regulate marriage are unlimited notwithstanding the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor could it do so in light of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), and Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942). Instead, the State argues that the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as illuminated by the statements of the Framers, is only that state penal laws containing an interracial element as part of the definition of the offense must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race.

Id at 7-8.

That is to say, you can marry anyone you want, as long as they're the same race as you. "Equal protection" across the board, whites and blacks alike. Which is precisely the same tack adopted by opponents of gay marriage: You aren't denied your right to marry; you can marry anyone you want ... as long as they're the opposite sex. Everyone is equally deprived of the privilege of marrying someone of the same gender ... whether they want to or not.

The U.S. Supreme Court, needless to say, dismissed this 'logic' as well for the Loving couple's case.

But good on Marla Spivak for bashing "Dubya's Brainstem" senseless. Maybe it was worth the speaker's fee Rove pocketed to watch him taken out by a high school senior....