The amendment wouldn’t have to go as far as the one the GOP was pushing 2004-06 and favored by Bush, which would have barred SSM from ever happening anywhere in America by any means. I’m saying that if the Supreme Court ruled that SSM was a federal constitutional right, there’s enough people who are vaguely pro-LGBT-ish (the Barack Obamas, frankly, who oppose Prop. 8 and favor civil unions but get squeamish about the actual word marriage) that an amendment specifically barring the Court from reading a SSM right in the Constitution would have a decent chance in Congress. That Democratic majority is full of Blue Dogs who are no further to the left on this issue than the president is.

It’s a lot easier to say “Let’s not make SSM a federal constitutional issue” than to say “SSM should never be possible for anyone anywhere, even if they got a popular vote in their own state to favor it.” The amendment the Republicans were pushing a few years back made a joke of their so-called federalism because it would overrule the states — which traditionally have been able to define marriage and have the federal government accept those varying definitions (first cousins? 13 year olds? states can decide). That amendment was never going to have much of a chance, because only the out-and-out haters could favor it.

There was no principled conservative ground for amending the U.S. Constitution to change how marriage had been dealt with in our system of divided powers. In contrast, there are a lot of non mis-homoist (i.e. gay-hating … I find the word “homophobe” inaccurate because it literally means fear when these people’s sentiments are closer to hatred) reasons to question whether the Supreme Court should be finding a right to SSM in the Constitution. And you’d hear every one of them (plus all the mis-homoist ones) if the Court at this point rules on SSM.

(I don’t see how the Court could say that SSM is *un*constitutional — there’s absolutely nothing in the text about marriage, and the little there is about sex/gender is for equality. At most, the Court could declare that there is nothing in the federal constitution that commands SSM, which would change nothing since all the state court decisions for SSM thus far have had independent state constitutional grounds for why SSM is required.)

We know what the country looks like with no guarantee of constitutional protection for same-sex marriage. We’re living in it.

And even if the court upholds bans on same-sex marriage, it won’t be forever. In 1883, the Court in Pace v. Alabama held that states could prohibit interracial sex. It took a long time for that one to get overturned, but it did. Ironically, the civil rights leadership didn’t want to back the Loving case. They felt it was a distraction from the movement’s real goals.

Heck, I said I might be naive. But that looks like a big ol’ strectch by any analysis.

But calling opponents “Fundies” and dismissing the risks has worked such a treat for the electoral efforts of the SSM movement so far. No need to reconsider strategy now.

And do you really think, without a true tidal wave of reaction that might have us all exploring real estate availability in Canada, that an anti-SSM Amendment could get a simple majority in either house, not to mention the required majorities in both houses and in the legislatures. The fundies have been trying for years to pass anti-choice, pro-school prayer, and ‘parental rights’ Amendments — the last is the really scary one — and have never come close.