The U.S. Supreme Court this week will hear a case from the State of Washington that could decide whether signing a petition for a ballot measure is a private, political act or whether the names of those signers can be made public. Gay rights activists and conservatives are switching sides on the issue of privacy in a case stemming from efforts to release the names of those who signed petitions for Referendum 71, in which traditional-marriage supporters sought to overturn an expanded state domestic-partnership law that grants “everything but marriage” benefits to gay and lesbian couples. The referendum passed at the ballot last fall.

But whether it is the National Organization for Marriage, the Liberty Counsel, the American Family Association, or the Family Foundation of Kentucky, anyone who denies that “American opinion is shifting” inhabits a fool’s paradise. Opposition to gay marriage is shrinking. In 1996, 65 percent took a negative view. Since then, support has fallen by about one percentage point a year. Basically, one (1) out of every eight (8) Americans has gone from opposing the concept to endorsing it.