Last night on the bus my driver and fellow passengers erupted into a spontaneous round of discourse on the state budget, prompted a coming 30% fare-increase that the state transit agency says is necessary to bridge a gap that will be caused by proposed cuts to the state budget.

Today, as I watch our governor delivery his very first annual budget address to the state legislature, I can barely hear what he has to say; the memory of the voices of those passengers, nearly all riding home from work or school, risen in protest and/or dismay at what is to come.

"Christie is shooting the working-class citizenin the foot," said one woman.

Another, seated two rows away, called out, "I'm going to have to work overtime just to pay for bus fare!"

"At least y'all have jobs already," muttered a nursing student as she toyed with her school ID.

"Umm hmm," agreed another young woman in medical scrubs.

"You gotta vote next time," the bus driver admonished us all.

They were still talking, some scribbling down information about a transit public hearing the driver exhorted us all to attend, when we reached my stop and I got off the bus.

They got married in the morning.

This morning marked the first day in which same-sex couples could be legally wed in the District of Columbia. Not surprisingly, this sparked (even more) commentary about the national same-sex marriage debate.

Also not surprisingly, I found myself wondering, again, why there was there any debate in the first place.

During the larger part of my education, I was taught that in the United States, a marriage performed in one state would be legally-binding in the other forty-nine.

Some things, it seems, were not meant stay the same. After 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act gave state law-makers the right to pass legislation to officially refuse recognition of marriages between two people of the same gender. My second-grade social studies text, my seventh-grade civics book and all six (What can I say? I was a nerd.) of my high school history teachers became wrong in an instant.

At time, I had only one question about how and why the law passed: If this country has a constitutionally-decreed separation of church and state, why have our law-makers endorsed a decision that is clearly based on religious beliefs?

These days, I have a whole hell of a lot more questions that haven't been answered, but, like a dog with a bone, I keep chewing on that first one. And I want to know why everyone else who supports the constitution isn't asking the same thing?