I wanted to break this post out of a long thread below, made in reply to an opponent of gay marriage. I think it explains how we need to frame the issue - and how eventually, we will prevail.
I smell fear from social conservatives, people who want a theocracy and people who want to be able to tell Americans what they can do, who they can love, what they can do with their bodies and how they can express themselves.
You're afraid because you know you're losing the national debate, and despite every effort to turn the tide (God Hates Fags, DoMA and other such demagoguery) you're still losing.
You peddle fear - fear that those evil faggots will rape children, break up families or "violate our family values." There's a sinister "homosexual agenda" that wants to recruit youth and turn our wonderful happy Christian nation into a gigantic gay orgy.
Yet more and more average Americans view this issue as a civil rights one - and if there's one thing Americans want to be rid of, it's the enduring legacy of our nation as an oppressor of its own citizens.
The vast majority of Americans love freedom and want freedom - for them, their sons and daughters, their neighbors and their friends. We believe in the idea of personal choice - we believe that we should be free and that we should tolerate or even embrace that which is different from us.
As more and more of those sons, daughters, neighbors and friends make it known that they're gay or lesbian, the basest instincts of fear are gradually replaced, in the American mind, by the highest ideals of love and tolerance.
People, at heart, are really good. We believe in hope - hope that our nation can be greater than it was, and hope that all Americans can live the American dream. We may occasionally disagree and squabble about how to reach that, but we all believe in a better future - for all Americans. We will always strive to reach that better future - it's only a matter of time.
Our hope will triumph over your fear.