"A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional," The Associated Press reports. "The decision will put the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court."

Will the highest court in the land confer a right to marry on gays and lesbians? Uphold Proposition 8? Or come to some other conclusion? Whatever the outcome, the justices will consider almost two decades worth of arguments. Jonathan Rauch made an early case that gays should perhaps have the right to marry. "If there is any social policy today that has a fair claim to be scaldingly inhumane, it is the ban on gay marriage. As conservatives tirelessly and rightly point out, marriage is society's most fundamental institution," he writes. "To bar any class of people from marrying as they choose is an extraordinary deprivation. When not so long ago it was illegal in parts of America for blacks to marry whites, no one could claim that this was a trivial disenfranchisement. Granted, gay marriage raises issues that interracial marriage does not; but no one can argue that the deprivation is a minor one."

Russell Shorto recounted how organized opposition to gay marriage got its start. "In May 2003 the heads of 26 conservative organizations, including the Family Research Council, formed an entity, which they called the Arlington Group, to pool resources and come up with a combined strategy for fighting the forces of secularism. They thought it would be an amorphous battle, with many fronts," he writes. "But just a month later the United States Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that had declared consenting homosexual sex illegal. Gay rights groups saw the Lawrence v. Texas ruling as a watershed: an endorsement, at the federal level, of homosexuality itself. So did the conservative leaders. Then in November of that year came the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that gave same-sex couples in the state the right to marry. The effect of this one-two punch, which was heightened by the mayor of San Francisco’s granting of same-sex marriage licenses the following February, was galvanizing for the Arlington Group members. The nebulous culture war instantly focused into a single issue."

Joshua Green profiled a liberal force in the culture wars. "The software mogul Tim Gill has a mission: Stop the Rick Santorums of tomorrow before they get started," he writes, adding that "a network of gay political donors is stealthily fighting sexual discrimination and reshaping American politics."

Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson explained why he agreed to be an attorney in the fight to get Proposition 8 overturned despite being a political conservative. "Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize," he writes. "Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it."

And Margaret Talbot wrote about the controversy over whether the Proposition 8 case should even be fought by gay marriage advocates. "If the Perry case succeeds before the Supreme Court, it could mean that gay marriage would be permitted not only in California but in every state. And, if the Court recognized homosexuals as indistinguishable from heterosexuals for the purposes of marriage law, it would be hard, if not impossible, to uphold any other laws that discriminated against people on the basis of sexual orientation," she writes. "However, a loss for Olson and [David] Boies could be a major setback to the movement for marriage equality. Soon after Olson and Boies filed the case, last May, some leading gay-rights organizations—among them the A.C.L.U., Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights—issued a statement condemning such efforts. The odds of success for a suit weren’t good, the groups said, because the 'Supreme Court typically does not get too far ahead of either public opinion or the law in the majority of states.'"