Just days after the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on gay marriage, Ellen DeGeneres invited John McCain to appear on her talk show and — rather amazingly — he agreed. At one point during the interview, which airs Thursday, DeGeneres said: “Let’s talk about the big elephant in the room.” She, of course, is that big elephant; DeGeneres recently made headlines by announcing her plan to wed longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi, and McCain is anti-gay marriage. McCain responded: “I just believe in the unique status of marriage between a man and a woman and I know that we have a respectful disagreement on that issue.” But DeGeneres didn’t let him get away with his amiable “Let’s pretend my worldview doesn’t discriminate against you” attitude. She said:

I think that it is looked at and some people are saying that blacks and women did not have the right to vote. Women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn’t have the right to vote until 1870, and it just feels like there’s this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people. All of us. You are no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me, what it feels like, I will just speak for myself, it feels like when someone says, ‘You can still have a contract and you’ll still have insurance and you’ll get all that’ — it sounds like you can sit there, but you can’t sit there. That’s what it sounds like to me.

Unwilling to debate the issue, McCain responded: “You articulate that position in a very eloquent fashion. We just have a disagreement.” He then wished her “every happiness.” DeGeneres thanked him and then, without skipping a beat, asked: “So you’ll walk me down the aisle? Is that what you’re saying?”

God, I love her.