Good politicians have the ability to appear to be on both sides of an issue, but Jerry Brown -- the former governor and presidential candidate, and the current attorney general of California -- is breaking new ground in this realm. Try to follow this: Brown, a likely candidate for governor in 2010, is supportive of same-sex marriage politically. But before the state supreme court, he's defending Prop 8, the just-approved initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California. At the same time, he's defending the marriages of approximately 18,000 gay couples who took the plunge in the past five months, while such unions were legal.

What's interesting about these Brown positions is that it's a safe bet he'll prevail upon all three. It's fairly likely that one of the four members of the state supreme court who voted to legalize same-sex marriage may reconsider when faced with a vote of the public. At the same time, it would be ghastly -- and legally messy -- to void the marriages of gay couples who were married legally. (This is not just a marriage issue; these married couples have changed names, adopted children, planned estates, written wills and bought property together, creating enough legal dilemmas to choke the courts). And in the long term, Brown's political position in favor of same-sex marriage is almost certain to prevail in California (assuming angry same-sex marriage supporters come to their senses and stop marching on churches).