And now New Jersey.(same-sex marriage)

EARLIER this year, defenders of marriage as we have known it enjoyed a string of victories in the courts. Several state and federal courts turned back challenges to states' marriage laws, leaving it to voters and state legislators to decide whether those laws should be changed to allow for legal recognition of same-sex "marriages."

At the time, some commentators took the decision as proof that constitutional protection for marriage was unnecessary. Those of us who had warned that the courts were going to impose same-sex marriage on a balking public were dismissed, as we have been before, as alarmist.

Our response was twofold. First, we pointed out that the tenor of the judicial decisions was in part a response to the political success of the campaign for the marriage amendment--without it, more courts would have followed the lead of the Massachusetts high court, imposed same-sex marriage, and patted themselves on the back as civil-rights pioneers. Second, we observed that as welcome as those decisions were, traditional marriage laws--and the right of the people and their elected representatives to draw them up--would exist only on judicial sufferance without an amendment. If the judicial mood changed, for example because the campaign for an amendment had flagged, then judges would recommence altering the marriage laws. And, of course, some bold court might decide to impose its conception of justice, political consequences be damned, by rewriting the marriage laws.

New Jersey's supreme court has, alas, now proven us right. Even in that liberal state, protective of gay rights, the political process did not yield the marriage policy liberal legal activists have sought. So they have gotten the court to hand them victory.

It is being described as a partial victory, because the court has said that same-sex couples must have access to the same benefits as married ones but not that their relationships must be officially called "marriages." Do not be fooled. The court has accepted the premise that treating married couples differently from same-sex couples is a kind of irrational discrimination. That premise leads fairly directly to same-sex marriage in logic, and may do so in future litigation.