This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases dealing with gay marriage: the challenges to California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. On the Political Scene podcast, Jeffery Toobin and Margaret Talbot talk with Dorothy Wickenden about how the Court might rule in each case and what the decisions could mean for marriage equality. Click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/XlrxwN

(Source: newyorker.com / The New Yorker)

millions of users of [Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks] have supplanted their profile pictures with that symbol to display their support and hope that the Justices will rule in favor of marriage equality…

…but how effective is this form of online activism? Matt Buchanan considers: http://nyr.kr/YJO5TP

(Source: http:http)

Everyone knows that same-sex marriage is here to stay; indeed, it’s expanding throughout the country at a pace that few could have imagined just a few years ago. The justices were not irrelevant to the process, but they weren’t central either. They knew that—and so did everyone else.

Jeffrey Toobin on why the gay-marriage fight is over: http://nyr.kr/ZBkSNA

Photograph by Jewel Samad/Getty.

(Source: htthttp)

In today’s Daily Comment, Jeffrey Toobin explains why the Prop 8 decision likely comes down to Justice Kennedy : “It was Kennedy—the swing vote—who was most concerned about a broad ruling. He said, ‘The problem with the case is that you’re really asking, particularly because of the sociological evidence you cite, for us to go into uncharted waters, and you can play with that metaphor, ‘There’s a wonderful destination,’ ‘It is a cliff.’’ Neither seemed like a place Kennedy wanted to go.” Continue reading

Photograph of opponents of same-sex marriage outside the Capitol as the Supreme Court heard Prop 8 oral arguments on Tuesday, by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images. 

Read our full coverage of gay marriage before the Supreme Court. 

Amy Davidson writes about a “very odd exchange” at the Supreme Court hearing on Prop 8 today, and the role of procreation in the case: “If our only concern in all this is what’s good for the children,” she writes, “then we should support same-sex marriage. It protects the children of same-sex couples. It harms no one.” Read more: http://nyr.kr/13uwffo

Listen to the podcast of “Wedding Bells,” Jeffrey Toobin’s Comment on gay marriage and the Supreme Court: http://nyr.kr/15MAoGV

Homosexuality has been politicized, but it is not a political matter at the core: it has to do with sex, love, friendship, and cultural memory.

In today’s Daily Comment, Alex Ross writes about gay rights beyond a marriage victory: http://nyr.kr/14rXZAH

Photograph by Sandy Huffaker.

(Source: newyorker.com)

In this week’s Comment, Jeffrey Toobin writes about gay marriage and the Supreme Court: “The question about marriage equality for all Americans is not if it will pass but when. The country has changed, and it’s never going back to the way it was. Though the battles continue, the war is over.” Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/ZGI9xh

WASHINGTON—Just after Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said having a gay son had caused him to reverse his opposition to gay marriage, Portman’s Republican colleagues began changing their positions on a variety of issues when they discovered that they, too, have families.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Speaker John Boehner said they realized they had wives and daughters, leading them to rethink their views on the Violence Against Women Act. “Having women in my life,” said Boehner, who has been married for thirty-seven years, “puts this thing in a whole new light.”

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/10ROA0p

The news, on the front page of the Times this morning, that dozens of leading Republicans had signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Proposition 8, the California gay-marriage ban, merited the A1 treatment that it received. Despite their party and their own past positions, Jon Huntsman, Meg Whitman, Ken Duberstein, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and others said that they supported a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This comes two days before the Obama Administration must decide whether it is ready to file a similar brief. In the most high-profile Supreme Court case of the year, with the future of how we view civil rights and treat our fellow-citizens at stake, someone had quietly engineered enough prominent conservatives from the opposition party to sign onto a legal brief supporting full equality for gay and lesbian Americans. That someone was Ken Mehlman, the openly gay former political director of the George W. Bush White House, the campaign manager for Bush’s 2004 reëlection campaign, and the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. 

Richard Socarides on Ken Mehlman’s gay-marriage mission: http://nyr.kr/Weh7Q1

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty.