Ambushed - While many have moved on to the latest scandal among conservatives, I'm still enjoying the afterglow from the Santorum stink, especially the NYTimes' recounting of a nasty tonguelashing the hard-right senator got from some PFLAG moms last week.

Some wry observers have decided that Rick Santorum is really a Democratic plant, arguing his outburst over gay sex must really be a plot to pull down the "big tent" that is compassionate conservatism. Of course, liberals (such as Dan Savage in the NYT) are having a field day, but socially libertarian Republican-lovers like Bruce Bawyer and Andrew Sullivan are upset and voicing uncharacteristically loud criticisms of the party as well. Both seem to be motivated by a lot of personal emotion, and you get a real sense of "my friends let me down" from them. At least for now, the Santorum issue has been a negative for the Republicans.

Yet while opposing gay rights has been a long-term loser for the GOP, Stanley Kurtz points out in NRO that getting ahead of the country on this issue poses its own hazards. Kurtz forsees massive political damage to the movement if gay marriage is imposed upon an unready populace by judicial fiat.

Personally, I think there is a fine line between using the court system to push forward reform and imposing a "revolution from above" that the country isn't ready for. Court decisions do have their advantages. Desegregation was the right thing to do -- the 1964 Act might not have come along without it. Of course, that law in and of itself was part of a massive compromise brokered by Lyndon Johnson, and it still resulted in amazing social upheaval. We have to believe the country was better off for it, Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond notwithstanding. But getting from there to here was not an entirely pleasant time.

I'm not so naive as to think that gay marriage will just happen because it's the right thing to do. Nor do I think a court decision in a vacuum solves the problem. Social progress involves millions of moving parts, and you have to apply pressure at countless points. That is the main reason I donate to both the HRC and Lambda Legal.