Will the Supreme Court uphold same-sex marriage?

Swing vote Anthony Kennedy is a strong supporter of gay rights, so...

A couple walks through City Hall in San Francisco before their wedding ceremony.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

By accepting two cases on same-sex marriage — Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor — the Supreme Court has taken center stage in the ongoing debate over gay rights. In recent years, popular support for same-sex marriage has swelled with astonishing speed, upending the politics of gay rights so dramatically that President Obama "evolved" to support gay marriage before his first term was even up. "Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying," said conservative columnist George Will on ABC's This Week. "It's old people." Enter the nine justices of the Supreme Court, who could either disrupt the movement's momentum, bestow the blessing of the country's highest court, or forge a middle path between the two.

Gay rights advocates are cautiously optimistic. That's largely because Anthony Kennedy, the court's conservative-leaning swing vote, is a strong supporter of gay rights. In 1996, he authored a decision that nullified a Colorado law that repealed gay rights ordinances, saying that the law was "born of animosity" toward gays, and that the Constitution "prohibits laws singling out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status or general hardships." In 2003, he penned the decision striking down state anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional, arguing that gays "are entitled to respect for their private lives." With four liberal justices presumably in tow, it's easy to imagine Kennedy anchoring a decision that comes down on the side of marriage equality.

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Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.