Relying on US Supreme Court decisions to carry popular struggle forward is ultimately a passive, conservative strategy. The best example of that is the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black man to sit on the court, was the NAACP counsel who argued for the plaintiffs, helping implement the NAACP's conservative strategy of relying on court decisions to dismantle racial segregation.
Despite the Court's decision, public schools remained racially segregated, as many Southern school districts either closed their schools, or, as exemplified by Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus, defied the court and the federal government to maintain Jim Crow. The progress towards racial desegregation which came during the 1960s happened because of direct action, of people taking to the streets outside of the existing electoral political system, as we saw in the Montgomery bus boycott or the demonstrations in Birmingham.
Having said that, and after being disappointed by the court's decision to strike Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act which defined which states and localities had to submit proposed voting laws for prior federal approval, the court's twin decisions on marriage equality today were blows struck by a conservative institution in favor of freedom.
Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion leaves untouched Section 2 of the now-dead Defense of (Unequal) Marriage Act: that section allows individual states to defy the compact by which all states are obligated to recognize marriages legalized in every other state. Here we see the court's essential conservatism, expressed in the form of caution. The court could have applied the Fourteenth Amendment's protections of federal citizenship rights by declaring that a same-sex marriage performed in Iowa must be recognized in Alabama. The Court refused to take that step.
However, what the court did do by striking Section 3 of the DO(U)MA, the noxious definition of "marriage" as between a man and a woman in extending federal benefits, was an important act. The court has extended over 1,000 federal benefits to those couples who have or are taking advantage of the marriage equality which now exists in 12 of the 50 states. Although limited, by extending marriage equality only on the federal level and not by broadly ruling that all 50 states must recognize marriage equality, the court has repudiated the argument that lesbians and gays can be denied equal protection under the law.
The Court's ruling on California Proposition 8, which outlawed marriage equality in that state, was also narrow. While the ruling that defenders of marriage discrimination had no standing has the effect of striking Prop 8 and returning California to the states which support marriage equality, that ruling only applies to California.
It's ironic that Justice Kennedy cited the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, in which the Court struck as unconstitutional all then-existing state laws outlawing interracial marriage. This Court had the precedent to also strike every state law or constitutional amendment opposing marriage equality. The Court chose the conservative path of ruling narrowly.
But, just like the 1960s, when the civil rights movement exploded across the South and then reached north to end racial discrimination in housing, credit, and hiring, it is now up to us to finish the work left undone by the Supreme Court.
We can do it! Now we must also turn our eyes to those states, some 31 in number, which allow discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing, and credit.
The Civil War was the second American revolution which established that all citizens of this country have federal rights which every individual state must respect. That revolution remains unfinished until every citizen of this country, especially its LGBT citizens, enjoys equal protection under the law.
Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work!