bluehighways:

American_Bottom: you go, girl. That response should be made into a template. Chinpudding, the lawyer in me loves the way you've framed the issues. Unfortunately, I don't think any rational legal argument will ever persuade people whose world-view is closed off. E.g., Scalia, et al. Do you think Kennedy (or some other such) is on the fence and persuadable by a good legal argument that would give him cover? I don't think the legal arguments are hard to make - it's very clear what should be done about gay marriage, to anyone with an understanding of homosexuality, or lacking that, any sense of fairness and compassion for others. I guess in the battle for hearts and minds, I think it's more about the hearts. The minds follow as a matter of course.

Thanks bluehighways. I guess, after the Prop 8 decision, I have more confidence in rational arguments going over in the Supreme Court than I have in the others! But to me the rational argument and the fairness/compassion argument are one in the same.

What do both sides bring to the table? One side has a long, damning list of current injustices, legal discrepancies, and harmful effects of discrimination that are actively oppressing a target group. The other side has a list of unsubstantiated "what ifs" and "but homos freak me out and it's my right to be freaked out by homos!"

I would hope even Scalia would be persuaded by hard evidence. Of course... that's asking alot of Scalia in this case, isn't it?

And yet you have the point, because the traditionalists have lacked hard evidence for their claims all along but, to date, they have won more of the legal battles, even while steadily losing in the court of popular opinion. What are they doing differently for their cause?