NORTHERN LIGHT.

The Fourth of July is one of the best holidays around: fireworks that get better every year, no gift-giving hassles, not too much commercial exploitation, nice weather (usually), no religious test for participation. And, no doubt, throwing off the yoke of perfidious Albion is something to celebrate. Still, every now and then a small regret intrudes that we weren't able to work out a peaceful resolution of our differences with the mother country. God knows we tried ("We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms," the Declaration of Independence notes sadly), but George III wouldn't listen to reason. A little less taxation, a little more representation, and, presto--two hundred and twenty-seven years later, we might all be Canadians. Would that be so terrible?

Our big, easygoing neighbor to the north has its problems--too cold, a weak dollar, a reputation for paralyzing dullness--but its people are reasonably free, and they seem, on the whole, quite nice. Their contributions to popular music (Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Band, the McGarrigle sisters, Leonard Cohen, Alanis Morissette--the list goes on) are legion. Their anomalous gift for comedy (Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers, and Jim Carrey are among the names that spring to mind) has made Ontario the Catskills of our time. By sending their soldiers to serve side by side with ours in Afghanistan, they supported us in our hour of need--the act of a true friend. By declining to participate in our Iraq adventure, they let us know that they sincerely thought we were making a mistake--also the act of a true friend. In matters of public policy they are often more enlightened than we are, without being snooty about it. Their health-care system is a mess, but it's a fairer, more humane mess than ours is. They have mastered the knack of having guns without using them to slaughter one another. They have a comparatively sensible approach to the drug problem: while our federal government tries strenuously to put marijuana smokers in jail, even (or especially) when the marijuana has been smoked for medical purposes in states whose people have voted to sanction such use, their federal government is about to decriminalize the possession of small amounts. And now--with a minimum of fuss, hardly any hysteria, and no rending of garments--they have made it legal for persons of the same gender to marry each other.

Meanwhile, south of the border down U.S.A. way, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in the case of Lawrence v. Texas. With surprising firmness, the Court struck down the remaining laws against "sodomy," thus bringing the United States to where Canada was a generation ago. Those laws, in Texas and twelve other states, had rendered it a crime, until last Thursday, to make love in the ways that, for anatomical reasons, are gay folks' sole option. It was a strong, solid decision, six to three, with only the hard-core hard right--Antonin Scalia, joined by William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas--dissenting. In his dissent, Justice Scalia accused his colleagues of having "signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda." And what is that so-called agenda? Daisy chains on the church steps? Compulsory drag shows at school assemblies? "Eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," as in Scalia's own definition? No, it's worse than that. Just like in Canada, some of these people actually want to get married. Pace Joni Mitchell, they want a piece of paper from the city hall, keeping them tied and true.

For the moment, the only city halls in the Western Hemisphere that are issuing such pieces of ...