Gay 'marriages' ahead

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For years, the issue of same-sex "marriage" in America has surfaced only occasionally, a topic of arcane conversation, and promptly slips away.

No longer. High court decisions in Canada and the United States and a pending lawsuit in Massachusetts will finally force "gay marriage" to the top of the nation's legal and cultural agenda.

"Today's decision has awakened a sleeping giant," attorney Mathew D. Staver said after the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a Texas ban on homosexual sodomy was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The ruling "will galvanize and reinvigorate the majority of Americans who believe in traditional marriage but have ignored the radical agenda of the same-sex marriage movement," said Mr. Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, the public-interest law firm in Florida that had filed a brief in behalf of Texas.

The high court ruling followed a June 10 decision by Canada's Ontario Court of Appeal that restricting marriage to "a man and a woman" was unconstitutional.

From now on, the court said, "two people" can marry in Ontario.

The Canadian ruling was greeted with jubilation by homosexual activists, and hundreds of homosexual couples -- including dozens from the United States -- have gone to Ontario to marry. There has been no test of whether any of these marriages will be recognized in any of the 50 United States.

'Mother of all cultural battles'