Four Democratic Senators Still Diehard Holdouts Against Marriage Equality: The Case of Pryor and Arkansas

And then there were four:

The four remaining Democratic senators who continue to refuse to endorse marriage equality:

1. Mark Pryor of Arkansas;

2. Joe Manchin of West Virginia;

3. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana;

4. Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

To say that I'm very unhappy with my senator from Arkansas would be a vast understatement. I'm downright ashamed of him, and ashamed of the fact that my aunt was his fifth-grade teacher (though I well recall her invidious comparison of his intellectual ability to that of his father, after her experience teaching Mark Pryor).

I'm also ashamed to be related to him as a Pryor descendant.

But most of all, I'm ashamed at the obtuseness, the mean-spirited refusal to recognize the human rights of everyone, the defiant determination to be on the wrong side of history when any new movement for human rights comes along, traits that have so badly served my poor, uneducated state for so long, keeping us near the bottom in all national indices of educational attainment, economic well-being, health, quality of life--you name it.

As Richard Florida's research on the creative class has abundantly demonstrated for a long time now, educated, talented, creative people simply do not want to relocate to parts of the country that cling to discrimination and intolerance. Places like Arkansas shoot themselves in the foot (and rob their children of a bright future) by this kind of behavior.

And we're not being helped along one bit by our current Democratic senator Mr. Pryor.