Where are the Copenhagen riots? Are there cars being flipped in Aalborg? Or if you want to try to throw the "it's different in Denmark" argument my way, why haven't the states of Connecticut, Iowa, or Massachusetts fallen into utter disarray? How many people were killed during the Great Californian Fundamentalist Uprising (otherwise known as the Proposition 8 Revolt)? Because as I recall it...precisely none, because the result of instituting same-sex marriage in California was a referendum campaign, not a bunch of fundamentalist rioters swinging from the streetlamps like a bunch of lunatics. That was a very, very public snapshot of just what sort of opposition one can expect when a US state legalizes same-sex marriage.
The Religious Right (by which I mean groups such as Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and the like) have a tendency to try to use ballot initiatives to win the day on their issues, not firebombs and car flipping. And why? Because the people who do things like bomb abortion clinics don't get anywhere. Interested Christian fundamentalists and their allies in the fight against same-sex marriage didn't respond to California legalizing same-sex marriage by burning down buildings and shooting people. They responded with a fucking TV spot. Here, watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI
THAT is what you can expect to see if federal recognition of same-sex marriage is on the approach. And if it happens, based on what we've learned, what will happen? I expect that the interested religious conservatives will try to take the measure to the Supreme Court and seek to argue that it violates the 10th Amendment to impose same-sex marriage on states which oppose instituting the measure and especially those whose constitutions explicitly define marriage as one man and one woman. I also expect them to lose that fight and to be told to take a hike. Even then, I don't expect riots. I expect what's happened in Connecticut, Iowa, and Massachusetts: nothing.
