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Lawyers plan to argue in the appeal that civil marriage is a fundamental right, that denying marriage is a violation of equal treatment, and that the state cannot justify exclusion from marriage. If the case is overturned and the couples are given their marriage licenses, Daniels said, it could begin a chain reaction of similar lawsuits across the country.

"Gay groups take the marriage issue out of the hands of the people and to the courts," he says. "This is why we need the Federal Marriage Amendment. If you take it to the people, we win. If you take it to the courts, the gay activists win."

The Massachusetts's Supreme Judicial Court is historically sympathetic to homosexual rights issues, having previously ruled in favor of homosexual groups who sued to march in a St. Patrick's Day parade. The only dissenting judge in the judgment has since retired. (The Supreme Court overturned the ruling.)

"We're going to lose in Massachusetts; it is only a matter of how quickly. The question is whether they can win before we can awaken interest in the amendment," Daniels says.

Minnery said that with the amendment's protection against the courts, threats of same-sex unions and marital benefits will come only from state legislatures. "But that's going to be a very much smaller fight in way fewer states than if the courts were left open to interpret it how they want," he said.

In order for the proposed amendment to become law, it must first be approved by two-thirds of both the House and the Senate and then ratified by three-quarters of the states. The bill has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. Daniels said that an approximate timeline for the bill would see hearings in November or December and a decision in February 2003.

If it does not pass, Minnery says, the only recourse will be to change state constitutions one by one. But either way, conservatives must travel a difficult road to protect the institution of marriage.

"Without an astute political sense of where we are now with this culture, we may not even be able to prevent marriage from being interpreted by the courts," Minnery told CT. "It will be a very difficult fight and a very long fight to get this one through."

Todd Hertz is online assistant editor for Christianity Today.

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June (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46