Salon.com has a thought-provoking article subtitled: "The religious right will mount a scorched-earth battle against the Massachusetts decision to permit same-sex marriage. And the White House may join in." The article, which you can read here (though you'll have to do the silly "premium" ad-viewing thing to read all of it), says:
[The religious right] are not afraid. They say they've got God, the president and the Republican Party on their side. While gay-rights activists hailed the Massachusetts ruling as an opportunity for gay couples to make the same commitments and enjoy the same rights as everyone else, activists on the religious right -- and their allies in the Republican Party -- began work to turn their defeat in Massachusetts into a victory in the presidential election next November.
With a large majority of voters opposed to gay marriage, the right sees in the issue a wedge they can use to separate Democratic candidates from voters otherwise inclined to support them. None of the major Democratic contenders actually supports gay marriage -- they all back at least a state's right to offer "civil unions" to gay partners -- but the right is confident that it's got a winning issue regardless.
I hope the Democrats will be able to counter this effectively. The religious right frames issues like this as examples of courts "creating constitutional rights," or [edited] "endorsing" behavior they view as immoral. But that's not what the courts are doing. What they are doing is limiting the scope of government, and restricting the realms of private life that the government can regulate and/or criminalize.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court did not "endorse" [edited] gay marriage. It simply found that it is a violation of the State's constitution for Massachusetts to discriminate on the basis of gender when conferring the legal benefits of civil union on couples.
Nor did the U.S. Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, "endorse" [edited] sodomy. It merely said that it was not the government's business to regulate or criminalize private sexual activity among consenting adults, especially when such regulation or criminalization was not gender-neutral.
Nor did Roe v. Wade "endorse" [edited] abortion. It just held that it was not the government's business to dictate or regulate a woman's reproductive health and choices.
The religious right will try to paint a picture of a liberal judiciary run amok, pushing the "gay agenda" or enabling "baby killers." That is bullshit. What we have is a (usually) responsible judiciary properly restricting the power of the government from regulating private activity, and preventing it from imposing a "moral" agenda upon its citizens through the law.
I am a "card carrying member" of the ACLU. I despise both the neo-nazis/skinheads and the KKK. But I think the ACLU's successful fight to allow the nazis' 1977 march through Skokie, Illinois -- a largely Jewish area with many Holocaust survivors, obviously selected to maximize the offensive impact of the march -- was a great and lasting victory. The ACLU despised the nazis' message and intent, but recognized that their right to express their opinions -- their right to be free from governmental regulation or suppression of their views -- was more important. The ACLU's position, and the courts' agreement with it, did not [edited] "endorse" the nazis' hateful message. Rather, their position focused on the inherent limitation on the government's power to regulate or prohibit the nazis from expressing their message, no matter how despicable the ACLU and the government found it to be.
I think this is a distinction most Americans don't recognize. I hope the Democratic candidates can figure out how to articulate it effectively.
UPDATE: Where the word "edited" appears in brackets above, I have removed the words "condone" or "condoned" because I had misused those words. See the comments to this post for details.