A precedent-breaking decision by one circuit judge in Pulaski County would have been contentious and confusing enough without its being thrust on the whole state all at once, leaving both the public and public officials scratching their heads over just what it meant. Did the state now have to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples or not? So county clerks compromised by doing both, depending on the county.

The moral of this story: A sloppy judge makes for sloppy law. Traditionally, and in this state constitutionally, marriage was only between one man and one woman. But that was last week. What it will be next week, who knows?

Some of the state's county clerks began to roll out marriage certificates to same-sex couples at once, while others held back, waiting to see how this new reading of the law would fare before the state's Supreme Court, which promptly sent it back to the same judge who made the careless ruling in the first place.

Surely it'll all work itself out eventually, but in the meantime what damage will have been done? Both to the clarity of law and to the innocent people and officials who thought they were following the law at the time. Couples who got their marriage licenses in good faith now have to wonder if those licenses will prove invalid.

It didn't have to be this confusing, not if the original ruling had been less sweeping, more exact, and if it had given the state time to put it into effect in an orderly way.

Some cheered this decision with as little thought as others denounced it. The usual vociferous legislator showed up to demand that the judge who had issued the decree be impeached, adding more heat than light to the discussion. Others praised the (current) outcome of the case without reservation. Whatever the merits of a judge's making new law, this is no way to make it: abruptly.

The future of this decision, and of the very definition of marriage in this state, remains foggy even as these lines are written a week later. More fog, and more ill temper along with it, are sure to come. A lot of both could have been avoided, or at least held at bay, if The Hon. Chris Piazza had exercised as much discretion as he did power. For instance, His Honor could have delayed the effect of his dramatic ruling till the state, its people and its officials were better prepared for it. It's called issuing a stay. Instead, the judge rushed--if not to judgment, then to its implementation.

The whole state was left to sail on into the murk, and into uncharted waters. The prudent captain, or judge, would have reduced speed in these circumstances. Instead this one ordered Full Speed Ahead--into uncertainty. For there was no telling what reefs lay hidden in the fog all around.

In contrast, good law is not only clear and forceful but patient and understanding, rooted in historic context even as it departs from it. Which is why the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark cases that ended official racial segregation in the public schools, chose to do so "with all deliberate speed," not in haste. For there was no sense, and no little danger, in making such a great legal--and social--change all at once.

It was left to this state's Supreme Court to step in Friday and once again do the job Judge Piazza should have done in the first place: issue a stay.

As for the substance of Judge Piazza's decision, it raised as many questions as the amendment to the state's constitution it overturned. The reason some of us opposed that amendment in the first place was not because we didn't support the traditional definition of marriage, but because the amendment left no room for a reasonable way-station on this journey to justice for those couples long denied it. A compromise like legally recognized civil unions, which would have provided much the same rights and recognition as formal marriage but without upsetting its traditional definition in law. Not to mention in custom, tradition, and in Western civilization or any other kind. But that kind of ideal solution becomes less and less politically feasible after this all-or-nothing decision out of a single circuit court.

Lest we forget, there is a law above the law. Call it natural law, which no man can overturn. Which is what a prophet like Martin Luther King appealed to when he spoke age-old truths to power, just as a long line of prophetic voices had done before him. He was following a tradition upheld not just by Thoreau and Gandhi in recent times, but going back millennia. Much like marriage between a man and a woman, which the Book of Common Prayer calls "an honourable estate instituted of God," and one not to be taken "unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly . . . but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly," which is the way it should be approached in civil law, too.

Yet this decision by a circuit judge defined a marriage license not just as a civil document, which it is, but only as a civil document. And one he could redefine at will. The result was a legal opinion untimely ripped from the womb of history, law, tradition and sanctity that gave birth to the time-honored definition of marriage as a covenant between man and woman. A definition the Hon. Chris Piazza dismisses as "driven by animus rather than a rational basis," as if anyone opposed to homosexual marriage must be driven by some kind of irrational homophobia.

But who would not rejoice at the sight of all those happy couples legally united at last? To quote another passage from the Book of Common Prayer, the Compline recited at day's end: Dear Lord, shield the joyous. But a judge's just substituting one stereotype for another, that of homophobic haters for immoral homosexuals, is neither progress nor love. And there is no joy in it.

Rather than solve a difficult and delicate challenge at law, the judge's ruling only added to the clamor, as one set of sloganeers cries "Marriage Equality!" and the other "Holy Matrimony!" with separate but equal thoughtlessness.

Can't we all just get along? And discuss this subject thoughtfully, patiently, and with respect for one another? And with a decent respect for the past out of which present and future should grow naturally. Rather than by some arbitrary imposition from the bench.

Come, let us reason together, rather than simply redefine a millennia-old social and legal institution to suit our current preferences. And change our definition of marriage as we would our fashions.

Historians have a name for the kind of history that does not fully enter and engage the past but simply overrules it, judging it by our own transient, purely contemporary standards. They call it presentism. And this decision out of Brother Piazza's court and impatient mind was a good example of presentism in the law.

Happily, the present confusion in the law may be only a passing stage on the way to its clarification and refinement. And to mutual understanding. Separating church and state in American law is challenge enough; separating religious values from American law, history and American society in general is impossible.

One of the great gifts of American exceptionalism is that we do not have to divide ourselves into perpetually warring camps, religious and secular, and brook no compromise between them. That kind of thing can be left to Europe's troubled history. It may have been Mark Twain who once said of some strange new concept in his time, "It's not right. It's not wrong. It's . . . French!" Let's leave that kind of thing to the Old World, and go our own, better way in this new one.

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at:

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Editorial on 05/18/2014