As you know from reading all the coverage, the most important issue of our times is gay marriage. It's big, big, big!

Well, except that the number of potential beneficiaries appears to be small, small, small ... The Washington Post reports on a new Census study:

The bureau’s latest report said same-sex couples now account for 0.55 percent of total households in the United States, which also increased. That’s about the same share as in 2000, when it estimated there were about 358,000 same-sex households across the country.

Okay, 0.55% ... That's not gay married couples, by the way, that's single sex domestic partnerships, some of whom might take advantage of gay marriage.

Well, now that the forces of enlightenment are well on the road to their inevitable triumph on gay marriage (without, so far as I can recall, ever winning a popular vote on the topic — they were 0 - 31 last I checked, but who cares about democracy?), they need a new issue to demonstrate their moral superiority. 

Ever since New York approved gay marriage, The New Republic has been promoting this article on its home page under the title "America's Next Great Civil Rights Struggle." Therefore, expect to read a lot of breathless articles about transgender and transsexual rights.

But how many people are there who have had or who want to have themselves sexually mutilated? Granted, the SPLC has dipped its toe in this emerging market, supporting the vicious campaign by three very smart transsexual academics against the academic freedom of Northwestern psychologist J. Michael Bailey for suggesting a subversive alternative theory of the motivation to the standard party line that "I always felt like a little girl on the inside." This drove a few high IQ / high aggression X-men, such as Harvard football player turned economist Deirdre McCloskey, into rages. The Southern Poverty Law Center jumped into helping out with the pogrom against Bailey, but I'm not picking up too many signs since then that the SPLC thinks this is a real growth industry rather than a niche market.

And, what comes after the transexuals win (however winning is defined - presumably, after various people have had their careers ruined for suggesting that there's anything the least bit yucky about having yourself castrated)? There's too much energy, too much anger, too much self-righteousness, and too much money for the taking for the civil rights movement to ever declare victory and go home, no matter how diminishing the returns. So, what's the next stage beyond trans rights?