“Today we have witnessed a resounding victory in the battle for American families," said Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family. "The passage of these amendments is the result of a tremendous grass-roots effort that has sprung up across the country. As we continue the call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, today’s victories once again demonstrate that American voters believe in traditional marriage.”

Glenn Stanton, Focus on the Family's marriage and family analyst, agreed.

“Clearly Americans are not anguished over what marriage means,” he said. “They’re very clear that it’s about a man and a woman, and these numbers reflect that. This is very different from abortion. Americans don’t soul-search on this issue. They know what marriage is and what marriage ought to be. And that’s key.”

Only Oregon turned into a horse race. But even there—where several thousand homosexual marriages were illegally performed in Multnomah County earlier this year in open defiance of the state Defense of Marriage Act, and where gay activists poured more than $3 million into defeating the amendment designed to strengthen that law against judicial activism—it passed by 56 percent.

“You’ve got a place that’s starting out as one of the most liberal places in the country," Stanton said. "You’ve got an unprecedented influx of money from the gay lobby. And this is the best they can do?”

This year’s battles over gay marriage may be over, conservatives said, but the national war is going to continue for quite a while: Homosexual activists vowed Tuesday night to challenge all the new amendments in court with the charge that they violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal-protection clause.

“It’s a twist on the modern legal language,” explained Mike Howden, president of Stronger Families for Oregon. “You have a writing in the Constitution that’s historic in protecting citizens’ basic rights. Now, they’re trying to give a new rendering to that language, saying, ‘Since this group gets protection and privileges based on marriage, then all groups who want to have marriage should also have those same rights and privileges.’ It’s a game of taking original language and ascribing to it a new rendering. They’ve done it with abortion and freedom of expression in a number of areas through judicial activism. This will just be another chapter in the same vein.”

Several more states are expected to consider passing constitutional amendments in 2005. Tuesday’s results mean they’ll “certainly feel the peer pressure to protect marriage themselves,” Howden said. “But they won’t be out on a limb if they do that.”

Although a proposed federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage in all 50 states—including Massachusetts, which touched off the current trend last November when the state’s highest court demanded that the Legislature legalize same-sex unions—failed in Congress this year, conservatives have vowed to bring it back. And if Tuesday’s results are any indication, it might fare better next time—particularly since it appeared at midnight that Republicans would retain control of both houses. The resounding majorities in 10 of the 11 states that passed amendments blow to bits the liberal party line that gay marriage is really “a states’ rights issue” that shouldn’t be dealt with at the federal level.

“That’s really what is so important about these votes,” Stanton said. “It shows our national leaders that the American people are not equivocal on this issue. They want marriage protected, and they want their leaders to protect it. Each of these [amendments] really does build momentum for that federal effort, and it makes it harder for politicians to equivocate.”

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