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all the progress that homosexuals have made in public opinion, "gay
marriage" remains deeply unpopular. In 1996, the federal Defense
of Marriage Act — defining marriage as a union of a man and
a woman for purposes of federal law, and allowing states not to
recognize gay marriages formed in other states — passed the
House with 342 votes and the Senate with 85. Polls find solid majorities
against same-sex marriage. Even in socially liberal California,
a ballot initiative to block gay marriage passed with 61 percent
of the vote last year.
Yet gay marriage may be on its way whatever the people think. Gay
activists are working through the courts to force gay marriage on
an unwilling public. Their game plan is perfectly clear: Get a court
somewhere, anywhere — in Hawaii, in Vermont, wherever they
can win — to impose gay marriage. Then use courts to force
other states to recognize that state's same-sex marriages. Then
get states that recognize out-of-state gay marriages to start letting
such marriages be formed in-state.
Politicians seeking to avoid controversy — including, notably,
Dick Cheney in last year's vice-presidential debate — have
pretended that whether gays should be allowed to marry each other
is a matter that can be left to individual states to determine.
But this is willfully naïve. There is no popular demand for gay
marriage in any state. What is going on is an attempt to use the
judiciary of any state to override the wishes of the people of that
state, and then of the entire Union. It is an attempt that should
be stopped by a constitutional amendment.
Constitutional amendments are not to be proposed lightly. The Constitution,
wisely, makes them difficult to enact. Conservatives, in particular,
favor stability in the nation's basic law. But the judicial campaign
for same-sex marriage leaves constitutional amendment as the only
sure way to prevent a harmful and antidemocratic revolution in American
law. Thirty-four states have passed laws that seek to preserve the
understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman —
enough to call a constitutional convention for the purpose of an
amendment, and close to enough to ratify one. To defend a valued
institution, an institution the importance of which can hardly be
overestimated, from what amounts to an ideological attack is a cause
that all conservatives should support.
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