First off, let me say that I support gay marriage and believe it should provide gays all the same rights, benefits, and obligations as heterosexual marriage.
That said, while the MA SJC ruling is an amazing breakthrough, I wonder if it will in some ways harm the gay marriage cause almost as much as help it. The effect that the ruling is having is that it is having a polarizing effect and getting gay-marriage opponents stirred up and prosposing anti-gay-marriage legislation at the state level in many states and at the national level.
My concerns is chiefly about timing, in several ways. From the poll numbers I've seen, general acceptance of gay marriage has been steadily growing, particularly among younger people, with the least acceptance amongst the elderly. Still, though, there is a fairly sizeable contingent against it, and far less than a majority that support it (there's a distinction between accept and support here - IIRC, "accept" means they won't howl over it and fight it, but wouldn't necessarily vote for it either, while "support" implies vote support). But let me divert for a second.
As I understand it, a big concern of opponents is that once MA allows gay marriage, other states will be forced to recognize the marriages (IIRC, states are required to recognize marriages done in other states), and their own states will be vulnerable to lawsuits forcing gay marriage there as well. (In other words, the slippery slope problem). So they are less inclined to write it off as crazy Massachusetts liberals, and more inclined to attempt pre-emptive actions to prevent that possibilty.
Once people have become polaraized and hardened on the issue, and if laws and/or constitutional amendments are put in place at the state/national level, I think it will be very, very hard to turn them around later. It also might degenerate the level of debate; ans Andrew Sullivan writes here (http://andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_02_08_dish_archive.html#107678351686768322)
"This will alter the debate - as will the actual existence of marriages in Massachusetts in May. The debate will become how to tear gay couples apart, how to demean and marginalize them, rather than an abstract debate about theories of marriage." I'm praying it doesn't lead to increased acts of violence.
Now back to my timing concerns...
If the SJC ruling happened 10 years from now instead of today, I think there would be less opposition, more acceptance, and more support, resulting in less polarization, and less likelihood of anti-gay-marriage laws/amendments getting put in place. Of course, the ruling happened in 2003, not 2013, so it's spilt milk and I suppose it's a moot point if things might have been able to work out more easily at that point.
My other timing concern is that this is happening right in the middle of the presidential election cycle. The current belief seems to be that a pro-gay-marriage stance would be a big loser in the national elections. This might force the Democrats to be only weakly supportive, at best, on this topic in order to avoid hurting their presidential chances (and those other dems up for reelection as well, I suppose). I think Kerry is going the "I don't support gay marriage, but civil unions are ok" route, but I don't know if that will make much difference to the gay marriage opponents. A worst-case scenario would be for the Republicans to force a Senate vote on some bill related to gay marriage this summer, which would force him to come down on one side or the other.
A lot of the opposition seems to be centered around the word "marriage", so in some ways it seems as if just calling them civil unions might remove the opposition. But looking deeper, a big part of the opposition is based on the thought: "If the government allows gays all the rights/benefits of marriage, then the government is officially *condoning*/*promoting!* the gay agenda/perversion/sickness/etc". Calling it civil unions instead of marriage isn't going to change that, only increasing acceptance of gays in general over time will.
Putting my concerns that the road to nationwide acceptance will be a rocky one aside, it's fun to think that barring some last-minute legal maneuvering, Massachusetts is likely to become the wedding capital of the US starting in May, when gay marriages are legalized here. (I'm presuming all those gay couples who have been unofficially married and waiting for this day to come for a long time, will find it very tempting to make a trip up here to MA and make it official.)
-bryon
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