ONE YEAR LATER: From the Boston Globe

One year after the historic court ruling giving gay and lesbian couples the right to marry in Massachusetts, activists and lawyers here are sticking with their strategy of aggressively pushing to expand that right, even though the Nov. 2 election revealed a nation far from ready for same-sex unions.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the Massachusetts group that successfully argued for the right to marry in the Bay State, is pressing ahead with a case to allow same-sex couples from out of state to marry here. In August, GLAD filed another lawsuit, on behalf of seven gay and lesbian couples seeking the right to marry in Connecticut.

Other activists are also arguing the issue in the courts. Cases seeking marriage rights for gays and lesbians are still pending in New Jersey and California courts. In several states, advocates plan challenges to bans on same-sex marriage approved by voters on Election Day, though activists remain divided about whether those efforts might backfire, speeding passage of a Federal Marriage Amendment. ...

Some, like Andrew Koppelman, professor of law and political science at Northwestern University, would like to see the lawyers hold off, in the hope that with more time Americans will accept same-sex marriage.

''Imagine you have a hornets' nest outside your house, and it's November," he said. ''You can wait for the winter to come and kill the hornets, or you can go out and whack the nest with a baseball bat. What we just saw in this last election are the consequences of whacking the hornets' nest with a baseball bat. All litigation can accomplish now is to make people who are already uncomfortable about same-sex marriage more anxious and defensive."

But GLAD civil rights director Mary Bonauto says, ''The hornets have been buzzing at us for 30 years." ...

Besides, Bonauto said, polls of voters on Election Day give advocates of same-sex marriage cause for optimism. More than half of those surveyed favored extending rights to same-sex couples, an indication, she said, that voters are more willing to recognize gays and lesbians than the 11 electoral defeats suggest.

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