The good news, I'm happy to say, hasn't stopped there. Consider three state decisions handed down just last week: A Florida judge threw out a lawsuit filed by two women seeking to have their Massachusetts marriage recognized, upholding the federal 1996 Defense Of Marriage Act that lets states ban same-sex marriage. The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the ruling of a judge who had thrown out a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. And the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that same-sex couples have no "right" to marry in that state.
The Indiana court went so far as to say that there is a "legitimate state interest" in supporting "opposite-sex marriage" because such couples "procreate responsibly and have and raise children within a stable environment." Hallelujah. That's exactly what's at stake here. Hearing such common sense spoken by a court is a welcome change, indeed.
All of which, paradoxically, makes this something of a dangerous time for supporters of traditional marriage.
Why? As Spalding notes, if we're not careful, we could be lulled into a sense of false security. Advocates of same-sex marriage aren't going away. Yes, they're reeling a bit now, and that's good. But it's not as if they'll never return. If anything, they've learned a painful lesson in over-reach. They got greedy and tried to force change. Yet they know the story of the frog in the boiling pot of water: Put him in when it's hot and he'll jump away, but put him in and turn up the heat gradually and before he knows it, he's cooked. Expect them to revert to the slow, steady approach.
We have to remember: Winning a series of battles doesn't necessarily translate into winning the war. To ensure that the next round of court battles doesn't turn against us, we need to keep pressing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution ? one that will decide this issue once and for all and remove this fundamental issue from the hands of mercurial judges.
It's the only way to stop that roller coaster from taking another plunge.