Word: courtly
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...high court has issued powerfully pro-gay-rights decisions at key points in the past 20 years - including striking down criminal statutes forbidding gay sex six years ago. But it has never voiced a word of enthusiasm for gay marriage. That has left scholars and longtime legal veterans of the gay-rights movement fearing disaster for gay marriage, should the issue be decided by the conservative-leaning Justices. "When I try to count the votes in favor of same-sex marriage on the Supreme Court, I have trouble getting to one," Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor...
...extremely high," adds law professor Samuel Marcosson of the University of Louisville, author of Original Sin: Clarence Thomas and the Failure of the Constitutional Conservatives. "I think the plaintiffs are (unfortunately) very likely to lose - at least if the case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court - and set a precedent that didn't need to be, and shouldn't have been, set. The case was premature and ill-advised." (See why the California Supreme Court upheld Prop...
...Vaughn Walker convenes a hearing Wednesday over whether to take the rare step of allowing the trial to be broadcast, despite strong objections by defenders of Prop 8 - the 2008 voter initiative that ended gay marriage in California. Televised or not, the trial will be the first in federal court to answer the question of whether the U.S. Constitution forbids states like California from restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples...
...plaintiffs prevail all the way to the Supreme Court, a decade of election-night wins by groups opposed to gay marriage will be reversed. Voters in more than 30 states have rejected gay marriage. That's what Californians did when they supported Prop 8 in late 2008, reversing a landmark state Supreme Court ruling that not only made gay marriage legal there, but gave gays and lesbians the same broad-based protection against discrimination that racial minorities enjoy. (See the top 10 news stories...
...begin with, Olson and Boies will argue that Prop 8 denies gays the fundamental right to marry, which the California Supreme Court held to be guaranteed. They will have to beat arguments from the other side that point out that no state prevents gays from marrying - like everyone else, they just have to choose a partner of the opposite sex. And they will have to convince Walker that civil unions, which remain legal in California, are not an adequate substitute...