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Its already starting. Today's philly inquirer.

Malcolm Lazin of the Equality Forum, the Philadelphia-based annual gay and lesbian gathering, disagrees with Scalia on everything but one point: that gay marriage - recently given the OK in neighboring Canada - is going to be the next battleground over gay rights and morality. He said a pending decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought by men turned down for a marriage license could provide the next spark.

Lazin agreed that the ruling may be a tipping point in the national debate that took center stage this spring when Santorum made his controversial remarks in an interview.

"The fact that today the court has moved us into the modern age is a major setback for Santorum and those of his ilk," Lazin said. He insisted that middle-of-the-road voters will sour on Santorum as out of step on social issues from the rest of the nation. Even the Supreme Court - with six of the nine justices appointed by conservatives Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Richard Nixon - took a surprisingly moderate position.

There may be a good reason that Scalia's words yesterday were harsher than Santorum's. Scalia gets to keep his job for life, while Santorum has to go back before voters in 2006. Some political strategists said the best plan for Santorum's re-election would be to simply shut up.

"He could only really hurt himself if he opens his mouth again and starts to scream about the ruling," said Neil Oxman, a Democratic political consultant. "If he just keeps his head down and stays off the tube and doesn't say anything, I think a million other issues will surface."

But some of those issues are still going to relate to gay rights, not to mention issues of sex and morality. Lazin ticked off a long list of gay-rights issues that have not yet been resolved, including whether homosexuals can join the Boy Scouts or openly serve in the military.

"Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools or as boarders in their home," Scalia said in his opinion yesterday. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."

But those are all fights for a future day. Yesterday was a day for social conservatives to lick their wounds and for supporters of gay rights to celebrate.

"This is unquestionably the most important gay-rights case ever," Matt Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Associated Press.

"The court is saying that personal relationships, intimate relationships that...give your life meaning, that gay people have the same right to those relationships that everyone else does."