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If the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturns a ban on homosexual marriage, traditional family supporters predict that activists will use the ruling as a wedge to force the rest of the country to accept legalization of same-sex marriage. A decision is expected this summer.

In March the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard arguments in Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health, in which seven same-sex couples claim they have a fundamental, constitutional right to marry. Four of the couples are raising children.

The plaintiffs—eight women and six men—lost an opening round a year ago when Suffolk Superior Judge Thomas E. Connolly denied them a right to marriage licenses. The judge, citing the marriage laws and traditions of Massachusetts and the nation, said only the state legislature is empowered to make such profound changes. The couples appealed to the top Massachusetts court.

Matt Daniels is president of the Springfield, Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage, which supports traditional marriage. Daniels predicts that same-sex activists will prevail—if not in Massachusetts, then in similar cases pending in New Jersey or Indiana. "Once we lose, they will file suits in every state," Daniels said.

Massachusetts Citizens for Marriage, another traditional marriage advocate, filed suit in January with the Supreme Judicial Court. The group demanded that a state amendment defining marriage as "the union of one man and one woman" be sent directly to the legislature. Last year lawmakers adjourned without voting on the measure. The session ended even though the organization had gathered enough signatures to require a statewide ballot initiative vote.

Evan Wolfson, executive director of the Freedom to Marry Collaborative in New York City, likens gay marriage rights to civil rights. He cites Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which banned separate education facilities for blacks and whites, and Loving v. Virginia (1967), which abolished laws forbidding interracial marriages.

"This case is about ending discrimination of people all over the country," Wolfson said. "The right to marry shouldn't be based on race, religion, or gender. It belongs to all of us."

Ethnic minorities, however, are troubled by such comparisons. "The civil rights struggle is not analogous to the gay and lesbian struggle," said Bishop George McKinney of the Church of God in Christ, one of the nation's largest predominantly African American denominations. In contrast to the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision (1857), "There has never been a ruling that gays and lesbians are less than human," McKinney said. "[Activists] are trying to hijack a legitimate movement. It's a shallow, emotional approach that cheapens and scandalizes the meaning of marriage."

McKinney's is not a lone voice: A new Wirthlin opinion poll shows that 70 percent of Hispanics and African Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports a federal amendment defining marriage as involving one man and one woman.

Polls still show that only a minority of Americans supports homosexual marriage, but the numbers are growing. Only 27 percent favored it in a 1996 Gallup poll. By last August it had risen to 46 percent.

Wolfson contends that Massachusetts is just the first step. If homosexual marriage is legalized in one state, under the U.S. Constitution's Article 4 full faith and credit clause, Massachusetts couples who move to another state could demand legal recognition for their same-sex unions.

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May 2003, Vol. 47, No. 5