William Saletan

WASHINGTON — Mandatory background checks are a terrible idea. They burden law-abiding citizens and don’t catch criminals. The databases they rely on are riddled with errors. We don’t even prosecute people who flunk the checks. That’s why Republicans are against imposing such checks on gun buyers.

WASHINGTON — In the last few days, investigators in Connecticut and Arizona have released thousands of pages of documents about the Tucson and Sandy Hook massacres. The documents, coupled with investigative leaks and with testimony about the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., paint a clearer picture of what caused these tragedies. It isn’t just high-capacity magazines or defenseless victims. It’s a failure to link firearms access to mental health information.

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 25, hundreds of thousands of abortion opponents assembled in Washington, D.C., for the March for Life. The weather was freezing, but they’re used to that. Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court case that declared abortion a constitutional right, was decided in January 1973. Every year, pro-lifers hold the march to mark Roe’s anniversary and renew their commitment to overturning it. “It might be 20 degrees out here,” activist Ryan Bomberger told the crowd, “but it has not put out this fire.”

No religion has fought harder against same-sex marriage than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 2008, the church supplied as much as half the money and 90 percent of the early campaign volunteers to pass California’s Proposition 8. But this year, it ducked similar fights. And now it’s rethinking its advice about homosexuality. The Mormon case against gay marriage is beginning to collapse.

The latest sign is a new LDS website, mormonsandgays.org. The site affirms the church’s ban on gay sex but offers several concessions. First, it acknowledges homosexuality as a deeply ingrained condition, often impervious to change. More than a dozen people tell their stories on the site, emphasizing the depth and persistence of their feelings. In a companion video, Todd Christofferson, one of the church’s 12 apostles, cautions that while some Mormons have felt a subsidence of same-sex attraction, others have experienced no change at all.

WASHINGTON - Until this year, opponents of same-sex marriage had never lost a statewide referendum. They’d won 32 straight times. Two weeks ago, the tide of public opinion finally overwhelmed them. They lost all four measures on the November ballot - one to ban gay marriage in Minnesota, and three others to permit gay marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington state.