Most Americans now support gay marriage. But they can't legalize it, thanks to the voters of 2004.

The question now is whether the new majority will get its way. To undo the constitutional amendments of the past decade, supporters of gay marriage will have to pass ballot measures in those states. In Nevada, they'll have to do it twice. Passing ballot measures is hard. People tend to vote against them out of suspicion and fear, particularly when you're messing with the constitution.

From a conservative standpoint, that's how the system should work. The point of amending state constitutions while the polls were still against gay marriage was to protect the culture of the traditional family from the onslaught of normalized homosexuality.

But if the culture of the traditional family as enshrined in these constitutions is wrong—if marriage is moral and healthy regardless of sexual orientation—then the walls erected by those ballot measures are a prison inflicted by the old on the young. And that legacy, unlike marriage, is a bond that death alone can't break.

(Readings I recommend: Jeffrey Goldberg celebrates the gay marriage movement as a vindication of the attraction of monogamy. David Frum argues that conservative fears about gay marriage have been falsified: "American family stability … has deteriorated much more slowly than it did in the 1970s and 1980s before same-sex marriage was ever seriously thought of." Rudy Giuliani says, "I still favor marriage as being defined between a man and a woman … But I was very glad to see people relieved of this burden of discrimination." Andrew Sullivan mavels that conservatives who exalted legislation over judicial activism now call New York's law a " tyranny of the majority." Steve Martin wants polygamy next: "I'm gettin' married in the mornin'! Wait. I am already married. NEW LAW REQUIRED." A Twitter wag replies: " Become a Mormon!")

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