  The senator from Utah has an urlLink editorial up on The National Review about the threat of gay marriage and it's pretty much what you'd expect. He talks about activist judges while ignoring the fact that overturning laws, sometimes even popular laws, is and always has been within the purview of judges given their primary task of upholding the requirements of state and federal Constitutions. He talks about how people in several states (New York, California, Oregon, etc. ) have passed somewhat popular laws "defending" marriage, without mentioning, again, that people pass popular, but unconstitutional, laws all the time that have to be overturned by "activist" judges because, well, that's their job.
He lays out the "five fronts" of the war against traditional marriage: 1) State Constitutional challenges to state laws passed by voters. 2) Federal Constitutional challenges 3) challenges against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed by Congress in '96 4) challenges to state laws under the full faith and credit clause attempting to enforce marriages in one state in another, and 5) If all else fails, sue, sue, sue First, 1) Again, many state Constitutions, like those already mentioned, have built into them even broader civil rights for the residents of that state than allotted to them by the US Constitution.
As much as Hatch might hate it, Constitutions trump laws every day of the week and any law that contradicts a part of a Constitution MUST be struck down. It's just the way law works. Most states have gotten around this by passing Constitutional Amendments, but that might not work as we'll soon see. 2) This is mostly going to fall under the 14th Amendment, specifically the part where it says that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws", which was then applied to the Federal Government through the 5th Amendment. Let's break that down. "Laws" must include laws and regulations on marriage and that's pretty obvious. "Person" applies to gays as well as heteros. "Equal protection" is where it gets a little tricky, but Constitutional law has said that if you can identify a group that is being legislated against in order to shut them out, that's not equal protection. Rick Santorum can talk all he wants about beastiality, but just look at this article: these laws are targeted with specific intent to shut gays out of the institution of marriage.
Swap blacks for gays and see if this isn't a violation of the 14th Amendment. In fact, it was like that right up until "activist judges" struck down popular laws against miscegenation. 3) Again, DOMA, being a law, must be Constitutional in order to be valid. I think it's pretty obvious that it's not, but it also represents Congressional overreach, that is, Congress got its hands into making laws which have always been a state matter.
4) Though passing a law like DOMA is definitely overreaching, it's pretty clear now that it's not just a state matter anymore because of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Long story short, states have to give recognize the laws of other states so, for instance, a married couple from Texas can move to Florida and Florida must recognize their marriage because it was made under valid Texas law.
This really becomes a federal issue as you can see because if one state has a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage and another allows gay marriage we're going to run into trouble, sort of like when we had some states that said slavery was illegal and others that said it was a-okay. 5) Not much to say on that one. The bottom line is that Hatch is right: gay marriage under the current legal system is inevitable. We have amendments in the federal and most if not all state Constitutions requiring that we not make legal clubs which we can deny people from.
Heteros get over 1000 federal rights the moment they get married including rights about visitation in a medical emergency, what happens to children after death, inheritance, etc., and we're systematically saying to gays that they cannot have these rights. It's illegal. The only way to make it not illegal is to change the US Constitution, but the same could be said for segregating schools, establishing an official religion, or allowing defendants to be convicted without a trial. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others? 
