<p>One year ago, the fight for gay marriage rights appeared to be gaining ground. Though dozens of states had passed defense of marriage laws, advocates took heart in state-sanctioned civil unions in Vermont, expanded domestic partnership benefits in California, and a Supreme Court decision striking down the Texas sodomy law.</p><p>Then came their most stunning victory: a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts making the state the first to sanction same-sex marriages. The ruling was hailed by supporters as the start of a new era.</p><p>But the pendulum swings both ways.</p><p>As supporters celebrate the first anniversary of the landmark Massachusetts ruling Nov. 18, opponents' hopes are bolstered by this year's strong election showing, when 11 states pushed through constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, joining six others who'd done so earlier. And President Bush has vowed to make a federal anti-gay marriage amendment a priority of his second term.</p><p>Both sides now say momentum is moving in their favor.</p><p>"I think what we're seeing now is a visible manifestation of the momentum that has been building and will continue to build," said Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, a conservative, Orlando, Fla.-based law group, which is involved in 30 cases around the nation.</p><p>"Backlash simply means that you're making forward progress," said Josh Friedes, spokesman for the Massachusetts Freedom to Marry Coalition. "I think that people who say it suddenly seems like the radical right has momentum on their side, they're not looking at the broad brushstroke of history."</p><p>History is often not measured in months or years, but in decades and generations. And both sides know the issue of gay marriage is not one that will be quickly settled in courtrooms or in the court of public opinion.</p><p>In April 2001, seven gay and lesbian couples who were denied marriage licenses sued in superior court in Boston to challenge the state's gay marriage ban. Two and a half years later, a deeply divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found there was "no rational reason" for such a ban under the state's constitution and ordered the state to start allowing gays to marry six months later.</p><p>The decision ignited a wildfire of reaction _ from renegade officials issuing marriages licenses in San Francisco and New York to conservative and religious groups pumping millions of dollars into efforts to support constitutional bans to politicians calling for removal of "activist judges."</p><p>Earlier this year, Massachusetts lawmakers took one step closer to placing a proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2006 ballot that would ban gay marriages but allow for Vermont-style civil unions.</p><p>It also sparked further legal challenges in Massachusetts, where officials cited a 1913 law _ which some say was written to prohibit interracial marriages _ to keep out-of-state gay couples from seeking marriage licenses.</p><p>Staver said he could feel passions rising as he spoke to people around the country.</p><p>"Even though there was a lot of lawsuits, my feeling was the same-sex marriage movement had moved too fast and it was going to be their Achilles' heel," he said.</p><p>Within a week of the Nov. 2 election, lawsuits were filed against the new gay marriage bans in Oklahoma and Georgia. Earlier this year, Louisiana's ban was struck down by a state court that found it improperly dealt with more than one subject by banning same-sex marriage and any legal recognition of common-law relationships, domestic partnerships and civil unions.</p><p>Eight of the 11 state bans passed on Election Day include prohibitions of civil unions as well as marriage.</p><p>"In any civil rights movement in our nation's history, when a minority makes significant advances toward full citizenship, that is when the forces against them rise up even uglier than they were before," said David Buckel, director the Lambda Legal Marriage Project.</p><p>Not all the news out of the election was bad news for gay-marriage supporters.</p><p>In Massachusetts _ though a backlash was threatened against lawmakers who supported equal treatment for same-sex couples _ none was voted out of office.</p><p>In Idaho and North Carolina, voters elected their first openly gay legislators, and an openly gay Hispanic woman was elected county sheriff in Dallas.</p><p>Supporters of same-sex recognition are pressing their cases in the courts of at least a half-dozen states, hoping they'll eventually succeed when the case reaches the highest court. Lawsuits seeking marriage rights or challenging bans on same-sex marriage have been filed in Nebraska, Washington, California, New York, New Jersey and Oregon, the state where the constitutional ban passed by the narrowest margin.</p><p>Opponents want to capitalize on the backlash and move quickly for a federal constitutional ban. The election loss of Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who helped scuttle a July vote on an amendment, fosters their hope that lawmakers in Washington will do what they failed to do last session, Staver said.</p><p>But Yale law professor William Eskridge, who has written a book about Vermont civil unions, said it would be insanity to move now to change the U.S. Constitution.</p><p>"The nation is not at rest on this issue," he said. "We should let Mississippi be Mississippi and Vermont be Vermont, and let's see where we are in another 10 years. At that point, there will be another generation of voters and more experience."</p><p>In the Netherlands, which pioneered gay marriage three years ago, the practice now stirs little controversy. In Massachusetts, gay marriages have taken place virtually without notice or protest since the ruling went into effect six months ago.</p><p>And in Vermont, where the nation's first sanctioned gay civil unions ignited a contentious battle and backlash against elected leaders just a few years ago, exit polls from this election showed a significant change in public sentiment.</p><p>An Associated Press exit poll in 2000 found respondents split 49 percent to 49 percent on whether civil unions were a good idea. However, this year's exit polling showed a strong majority of Vermonters has grown comfortable with _ or at least accepting of _ legally recognizing gay relationships. When asked to choose between three options for legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships, 40 percent said they support marriage, 37 percent civil unions and 21 percent neither.</p><p>"The fact of the matter is where gay people have been given rights, they have been used responsibly," Eskridge said. "They have not led to any of the negative consequences that anti-gay speakers have suggested and indeed people have found gay people make great citizens, and they make great parents and they make great married and civil-unioned couples."</p>
