Antonin Scalia “knew this day would come,” said Michael McGough in the Los Angeles Times. Back in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law banning homosexual sodomy, the conservative jurist said in a furious dissent that the ruling would cause “a massive disruption of the current social order” equivalent to legalizing bestiality and incest, and predicted that it would open the door to gay marriage. Sure enough, the Supreme Court agreed last week to wade into the most contentious civil-rights issue of our times, and hear two cases involving the constitutionality of gay marriage. Back in his chambers, a grumpy Scalia must be saying, “I told you so.” When the court hears oral arguments in March, said Emily Bazelon in Slate.com, it will mark a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The court will consider challenges to the constitutionality of both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing any state’s gay marriages, and to California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage there. One possible outcome is a Roe v. Wade–like ruling that instantly makes gay marriage “legal in every single state.” Whatever happens, “this is gonna be big.”
The question is, how big? said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. Though they’d deny it, the court’s justices “are exquisitely aware of the public mood,” and don’t like to get out too far ahead of popular opinion. Over the past decade, public support for gay marriage has grown rapidly, as successful ballot initiatives in Washington, Maine, and Maryland recently proved. But 33 states still have laws banning gay marriage, and polls say 47 percent of Americans remain opposed to it. Thus, it’s likely the court will seek to avoid another Roe-like backlash with a narrowly worded ruling that strikes down DOMA and Prop. 8—without deciding whether all gay Americans have a constitutional right to marry.
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