Gay Marriage Amendment

Inspired by this post at Captain's Quarters, I'd like to chime some agreement. In brief, I don't support this amendment and would support legislation allowing gay marriage (about that more later, maybe). What I would like to talk about is the motive behind using the amendment process to ban gay marriage.
The reason behind it is simple, Roe v Wade. When the Supreme Court made a blanket decision for the entire country about a divided and passionate issue it set the stage for this type of showdown. The message given was that legislatures don't matter. What matters is some private definition of justice to as few as five people. If they don't think a law is a good one, they can toss it out. The standard they should have judged from shouldn't have been good or bad, but constitutional or unconstitutional. The game became very simple, find a friendly judge and change a law.
What are you supposed to do if you support an issue that is vulnerable to judges? Place it beyond their reach. That's what a constitutional amendment would do. If this was simply a case of voting in a majority to pass a law, we'd be covered by DOMA.
Large majorities have voted against gay marriage whenever it's gone to a ballot. I disagree with them but I have to respect that they feel that way. Why? Because that's the way the process works. And the process is important. I honestly feel that it's more important than the issue at stake.
What should supporters of gay marriage do? The answer is so simple that it's hard to see. Convince enough people to agree with you that you gain the majority. Explain why gay marriage won't damage existing marriage. Explain how it'll help current families with a gay parent or parents. Stress how much it'll help with things like inheritance, visitation, etc, that are clearly important to gay couples. The U.S. is not a nation of bigots. If you can convince people that you're right, they'll support you. I firmly believe this.
BTW, if I was writing this amendment it'd be something along the lines of 'The Courts have no powers over how states define marriage.' That should solve the activist judge problem without creating an equally bad federalism problem.