Close. I said things like lady doctors, male nurses, interracial marriages, and same gender marriages weren't happening unless the culture changed.
I never said the political battles and court battles weren't important. You imply the cultural change doesn't matter. I say it takes both, but changing the culture is primary.
Gay marriage and domestic partnerships were already widely accepted when Newt passed DOMA. Marriage equality has only become more acceptable since then.
I would guess they might try to send it back to the states like with abortion, but I think that might run into privileges and immunities issues.
DOMA was passed in 1996. It was in response to legalization of same sex marriage in Hawaii - which came about not because of "cultural change" but because of a court decision. Newsom married same sex couples in 2004, in 2008 California voted on Same sex marriage and it LOST - in California, in a presidential cycle with Obama on the ballot. We don't have the same definition of widely accepted if you think it was widely accepted in 1996.
Since Obergfell (2015) - gay marriages have been legal everywhere in the US. I assert that this legality drove the cultural acceptance, not the other way around. The baptists know this - if they can make it illegal, that changes the status quo and they hope to drive the culture backwards.
Abortion rights are more widely accepted today than they were when Roe occured, yet Dobbs happened. In other words, the law was primary above the cultural acceptance.
Abortion and same sex marriage are different logistically. A lot of people don't give a shit about Dobbs in practice because well, if they need an abortion they can just go somewhere that it's legal, and it's done. If same sex marriage is kicked to the states, you could go get married somewhere that it's legal, but that doesn't help you when you go back home to where it's illegal, you still can't go visit your partner in the hospital and will have trouble with estate when they die. And it impacts a smaller percentage of the population. We'll see.