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"Thirty-eight States have passed DOMA."

In 1948, when 30 states had laws on the books barring interracial marriages, the California Supreme Court, in the case of Perez vs. Sharp, ruled that the state's anti-miscegenation law violated the due process and equality guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, more than 90 percent of Americans were against the decision, and supported the laws. At best, they believed such marriages went against the traditional definition of marriage or against God's law. At worst, some wanted to "preserve racial integrity" by preventing a "corruption of blood" and "a mongrel breed of citizen."

Sometimes, a whole bunch of people agreeing on a bad principle is nothing more than a clear indication that people can be wrong in large quantities.

Assuming that judicial activism was necessary and needed as to matters of race (actually, the legal superstructure for it was far more secure than it is for gay marriage, because the 14th amendment was written with race in mind, and race is one of those indelible and visible things that affects us every waking moment), does that give SCOTUS a hunting license wherever under the sun it chooses to go? Race in some ways is a sui generis issue, and to use it as the linchpin for analysis about everything is misguided. Race certainly killed off what was left after the Civil War of states rights as a legal doctrine with any legal traction. One can debate about whether that was a good thing, or a bad thing, but it certainly was and is an indelible legacy. Where might the judicial hunters (poachers?) go next, and where are the boundaries, and how does one enforce such boundaries, assuming one thinks there should be any?