Is nationwide gay marriage inevitable?

[Brittain33]

Probably -though I would hope that the Supreme Court doesn't seek to impose itself with another Roe vs. Wade-like decision, and let the states decide for themselves.  It will be a longer but more democratic process. 

When Roe v. Wade was decided, there were fewer states with legal abortion than which currently have legal same-sex marriage.

Introducing nationwide same-sex marriage via a court case now, when there are only 6 states that have it, would be counterproductive. It's not going to happen anyway because there are no court cases in the pipeline. But what about in the future, when half of Americans live in states with same-sex marriage? What if we reach a point where 30 states have it, but Utah, Alabama, and Mississippi will never do it--similar to where we were with sodomy laws just before Lawrence v. Texas? At that point, you will have a seriously untenable situation with marriage and divorce laws out of whack for a large number of people--far more than would ever be affected by current disparities in consanguinity laws, for example.

[Brittain33]

No.  Things change and peoples minds change.

I wouldn't shock me to see a shift torwards the traditional marriage in the next 15 years making gay rights and marriage a underground issue once again.

How? What is going to cause that to happen? What is going to make young people change their minds, and even younger people decide to rebel against equality for gays? Opposition to gay marriage is the default position in this society, and everyone who disagrees has had to overcome that one way or the other. It never moves in the other direction for individuals.

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Not sure what you mean by this, but very few people even dreamed of gay marriage prior to the early 1990s. It was the court case in Hawaii that first brought it some limited national attention.

There were occasional stunts in the 1970s, I think, that had less historical significance than Victoria Woodhull's presidential campaign did for Hillary Clinton.

[Brittain33]

Ancient cultures like the Greeks and Romans were more accepting of homosexuality than their descendants and now their descendant's descendants are more accepting of homosexuality. Looks more like flip-flopping or a societal sine wave.

Whose to say we always progress to the left?

If we suffer a massive breakdown of society or the economy or the equivalent of barbarian invasions, I am sure that what remains will regress to "conservative" values and that outsiders of any kind will be persecuted. If New York comes to resemble Rome ca. 700 AD, with a fraction of the population engaged in herding goats on the Upper West Side, gay marriage won't be on the agenda.

I am assuming that America continues more or less as it is now. Given that assumption, I don't see reactionaries winning over society. 

[Brittain33]

Unless it turns out that gays and lesbians are a bunch of disguised and very confused alien invaders bent on world domination, yes.

TASTE LIKE CRAB... TALK LIKE PEOPLE

[Brittain33]

No, unless the SCOTUS butts in and forces it.

Ironically, the opposite happened today.