I doubt the legislature of the state would go that far.
The sad thing is that we're having to amend our state constitutions to keep them as they are. Not a single state constitution anywhere in the country guarantees a right to gay "marriage"
I suspect most of those states recognize that the rights clauses contained in them can easily be interpreted to require equal protection of the law. Since no one thought about this issue, the appropriate thing to do is to amend their constitutions to ensure that equal protection does not include gay marriage.
What judges like Margaret Marshall do is go on search and destroy missions through their constitutions until they find some vague or general clause ratified 200 years ago, and they then "interpret" it to mean whatever they desire, be it gay "marriage", abortion on demand, ripping the cross out of the public square, or whatever.
Activist judges who believe that a constitution permits the recognition of activities, or as in the case of the cross, denies certain activities will rule that way. Conservative judges will refrain from making a decision that results in changes to customs. Both sides have a mixed record. Going back to Plessy, it was obvious that a wrong existed in this Country and conservative courts were refusing to acknowledge their duties. Going to Roe, it was obvious (to some) that the court looked for an out in determining that the fetus was not a person so that it could rest its case on privacy. Both decisions were wrong.
If judges can do that then there's really no point in having a written constitution in the first place. The idea of a written document is that it can't be changed except by amendment.
The problem you run into is that with respect to rights, most of the amendments are quite general. This requires a court to make some interpretations and define tests. The requirement for a Miranda warning was a court imposed test to ensure that the 5th Amendment was being adhered to. Your favorite, the 14th Amendment permits a discriminatory act if the state can show a compelling need for the discrimination.
It isn't supposed to change every time someone comes up with a revolutionary idea that can be forced, via a stretched "interpretation", into some century-old amendment that A) had nothing to do with the revolutionary new issue, and B) wouldn't have been ratified if it did.
Whether it would have been ratified is irrelevant. The language of most of the rights provisions is so clear though general that they must still be capable of pertaining to the changes in the Country over the years. Homosexuality is an example. For most of our history, it was simply a deep dark secret no one talked about. Now that it is in the open and most Americans accept it for what it is, naturally cases are going to come up to the USSC involving homosexuals. That is again the reason for the state laws and amendments ensuring that those "rights" do not include gay marriage.
In constitutional law, the assumption is that we the people have a right to govern ourselves, and that it can only be voided if the court PROVES that the laws we (or our elected reps) have passed violate the constitution.
I agree with that. Those who bring cases must substantiate their case. But in certain circumstances, it is easy to substantiate a condition of unequal treatment, or in other words to establish a prima facie case. The state then only need explain the purpose of the law. Sometimes it has a reason, sometimes it does not. An area where the courts are not in agreement is in the area of affirmative action. The Bakke case showed that discrimination was not justified in support of diversity, yet in the University of Michigan cases, the court went both ways. Permitting one student who is less qualified to step above another who is better qualified is wrong no matter the vision. This discrimination is the work of states.
The Internet is the next major area. Since it did not exist, the First Amendment could not have conceived of free speech issues that are quickly becoming a real issue with the Internet. Pornography, threatening speech, tax issues, election related issues will all become issues for the courts because of the Internet.
There's a difference between a technological change and a philosophical change. The former involves new methods of doing an old thing. The latter involves a new viewpoint.
The 1st Amendment protects (among other things) Free Speech. New methods of carrying out that freedom have been invented since the 1st Amendment was ratified. Television, internet, etc.
But the amendment protects the ACT of free speech. The fact that the methods of carrying out that act might change over time due to technology doesn't matter. Speech is still protected.
Suppose that in 1850, a law had been passed prohibiting taking a controversial drug (let's call it drug X) across state lines under the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. Would that mean you or I could today take that drug across state lines in car? After all, cars didn't exist in 1850, so would they not be covered by the law? Of course they'd be covered. The law prohibits the ACT of taking the drug across state lines. The method is irrelevant, and as methods change over time due to technology, the law incorporates them.
In the case of homosexuality, though, it's not a new thing relative to the Bill of Rights, or the 14th Amendment, like television is to the 1st Amendment. Homosexuality existed at the time the BOR was ratified. It existed at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified. It existed at the time the provisions of the Massachusetts constitution Margaret Marshall cited were ratified. And in all those ratification circumstances, it was unthinkable that gay "marriage" would have ever been the intent of any of those amendments. Had it even crossed anyone's mind that that might happen, the amendments in question would have either been rejected, or ratified only after being reworded to make sure they didn't sanction gay "marriage". Homosexuality was considered at the time to be a total abomination, so much so that no one in their wildest fantasies ever dreamed that anyone would ever interpret the amendment they were authoring as mandating it.
Now, you say that attitudes change. That's true, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But that's not constitutionally relevant. If attitudes change ENOUGH, then the votes will exist to enact gay "marriage" democratically. If they change at a literally revolutionary level, then the votes will exist to amend the Constitution to guarantee a "right" to gay "marriage".
But what if they change at a level below that? What if support for gay "marriage", which was at essentially zero when the 14th Amendment was adopted, rises to about 20% and stops? Is it the responsibility of the court to accommodate that 20% by reading it into the 14th Amendment? Why should that be the case when 20% could never be enough to ratify a constitutional amendment?
In the case of gay "marriage", and the gay agenda in general, we have a situation where only a minority of the poulation in general is supportive, but a majority of the ELITE population is supportive. The elite population has influence on the courts, via personal friendships with judges, via law review articles, via fluff pieces in the New York Times, via the power to socially mingle with the justices at various beltway functions. That's why gays now have so much clout in the courts, and why Romer got handed down.
Compare that to polygamists. I doubt that the public in general is any less supportive of polygamous marriage than they are of gay "marriage". Put polygamous marriage on the ballot in Texas and it would probably lose four-to-one, about the same margin as gay "marriage" lost by. The American people are strongly opposed to both polygamous marriage and gay "marriage". But there's a huge discrepancy among elites. Gay "marriage" is all the rage in elite circles. It's the hot new "human rights" issue. But polygamous marriage isn't currently a big deal among elites.
That's why we see gay shows all over TV, but not polygamy. We see Showtime and the Sundance Channel hosting gay directors weeks, but not polygamous directors weeks. We don't see polygamists painted as sympathetic victims of prejudice, as we do with gays in movies such as Brokeback Mountain and V For Vendetta.
And it's because of that difference in elite opinion that gay "marriage" is a judicial threat to us and polygamous marriage isn't. It's why the Supreme Court has declared homosexuals to be a protected 14th Amendment class, and not polygamists. If elite opinion were reversed, the judicial situation would likewise be reversed. Gays would be irrelevant people on the judicial sidelines, while polygamy would be advancing like a juggernaut through our courts.
That was Scalia's point at the close of his dissent in Romer. Homosexuality by then was fashionable within certain elite circles, so the court forces homosexuality on the public in a way they would never do with an unfashionable group, and that's the only difference.
It's not the function of the judiciary to force something on the public that we do not desire without clear constitutional mandate. Using a generally phrased passage such as the Equal Protection Clause to do that with homosexuality, when it's clear that was never intended by the phrase's authors and ratifiers, is tyrannical conduct by the court. And ironically, it's discriminatory conduct, since they only read new things into that amendment based on their own biases. Fashionable groups get added in, unfashionable ones don't.