LITTLE MRS. CAN'T BE WRONG.

As she did with the Iraq War, Megan McArdle's got to come up with something contrarian to show that the dirty hippies with their annoying habit of being right about things aren't really right, not in the way that counts. So:

In some sense, it doesn't really matter how the Supreme Court rules on the gay marriage case it's hearing today. The culture war is over on this front, and gay marriage has won. Even if it loses at the Supreme Court this term, it will win in the legislatures . . . because it is already winning in popular opinion. Few people much under the age of sixty see a compelling reason that straights should marry and gays should not. For that matter, my Republican grandfather is rumored to have said, at the age of 86, "I think gays should marry! We'll see how much they like it, though."

At this point, it's just a matter of time. In some sense, the sexual revolution is over . . . and the forces of bourgeois repression have won.

The whole thing is so dizzying in its stupidity that it defies analysis, but basically: When gays can get married, then getting married will be so much the norm that you stupid bohemians with your free love will be ostracized like cigarette smokers. And leading the way will be those nice young Republican Presidential candidates:

The 1970s were an open revolt against the idea of the dutiful pair bond, in favor of a life of perpetual infatuation. The elites led the way--and now they're leading it back. Compare Newt Gingrich or John McCain to the new generation of Republican hopefuls. Jindal, Ryan, Christie, Rubio . . . all of them are married to their first wives. Jindal met his wife in high school, Christie in college. By their age, McCain was preparing for his first divorce, and Gingrich was just a few years from his second.

I'm surprised she didn't mention the irony that these GOP worthies whose shining monogamy will triumph in the new age of gay-marriage-enabled neo-Victorianism are all against gay marriage. 

McArdle also returns to that marriage-will-make-you-rich nonsense she was pimping last week, citing it among the forces that will make sexual hedonism de trop.  Of course she would think that -- she's one of those people who actually watch Ross Douthat measure marriage with a slide rule to determine the optimal connubial age in a healthy society, and not only finds it fascinating instead of ridiculous, but thinks it will change the way normal Americans behave. Yes, forget culture, forget the economy, forget the environment, forget the forces with which we interact every day -- once the big-brains emerge from their labs with their new, this-time-for-sure convincing evidence we should all get hitched and commence procreating at age 22.73, everyone will get with the program.

Try to imagine being so anxious, not just to be right, but to prove your enemies wrong. Think of what wonderful things McArdle could have achieved with her obviously bountiful imagination if she hadn't been compelled to waste it all on that.

UPDATE. Comments are as always a joy, but I must single out aimai for the term she has invented for McArdle's habit, when troubled by progressive advances, of weaving dark tales of unintended consequences yet-to-come: "weaponized sour grapes."