We could hope, as we listened, that on this great issue, like others demanding answers now -- bringing our fiscal house in order, restoring equality of opportunity to our economy, ending our country's sick obsession with guns -- that future Inaugural addresses would be able to note the kind of material progress that we have seen with regard to combating racism or ending wars.

CNN: Obama's America, better than what Founders imagined

If a majority of the French people backed equality of treatment and therefore civil union for all, with its strings of fiscal advantages, they did however split on the second part of the bill, and the question of adoption rights and access to IVF for gays and lesbians.

CNN: Notre-Dame suicide on the altar of same-sex marriage