LOS ANGELES — After a run of setbacks at the state level, gay rights advocates will take the campaign for same-sex marriage into a federal courtroom on Monday, starting down a treacherous avenue that ends at a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.
“It’s a high-stakes poker move, no doubt about that,” said Jane Schacter, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford University. “I think the calculation for a long time has been that it’s hard to count five votes in favor of same-sex marriage on the current Supreme Court.”
Two couples are asking Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker to rule that same-sex marriage is a right embedded in the Constitution, and that it was violated last year when California voters passed a ballot measure confining matrimony to members of the opposite sex.
In the San Francisco courtroom, however, the spotlight is not on the gay male or lesbian pair, but on the odd couple representing both: Theodore B. Olson, a conservative Republican, and David Boies, a famed Read more………..
