This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two landmark cases on the question of same-sex marriage, one about California's Proposition 8 and the other about the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies hundreds of federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples. The cases could go any of a number of ways, with many predicting that the Court will strike down DOMA but find some way to avoid saying that laws banning same-sex marriage in a particular state are unconstitutional. (Options include upholding Prop 8 and ruling that those defending the initiative have no legal standing to do so.) As usual, all eyes will be on Anthony Kennedy, presumed as always to be the swing justice whose opinion will determine the outcome. Regardless of how the Court decides, it's feeling more and more like this is a battle whose ultimate outcome is no longer in doubt. On our web site today, E.J. Graff marvels at how quickly things have changed; it was only ten years ago, after all,...

Gage Skidmore / Flickr Tony Perkins speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. At this point, it's almost cliché to say that we've seen a sea change in attitudes toward same-sex marriage. But it's hard not to remark on the rapid move from widespread opposition to widespread support. Recall, for instance, that it was just eight years ago when the sitting president ran a re-election campaign with gay baiting as a key strategy. Now, looking ahead to 2016, both parties are likely to field candidates who are either supportive of marriage equality (in the case of Democrats) or simply silent on the issue (Republicans). Writing at TechCrunch, Gregory Ferenstein attempts to root this shift in the rapid growth of the Internet, and even goes as far as to argue that the web has weakened the Religious Right—the main political opponents of same-sex marriage—to the point of irrelevance : As the GOP struggles to regain its footing with bright young programmers and the growing libertarian...

KOMUnews Recent polls show majority support for marriage equality, a rapid change from just a few years ago. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of Congress. The same malapportionment that gives Republicans a structural advantage in the House and Senate also overweights the votes of social conservatives, who tend to reside in the nation's more rural areas. Congress will eventually voice its support for same-sex marriage, but it will lag behind the country as a whole. For this reason, it's worth noting Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill's support for marriage equality, announced yesterday afternoon on her Tumblr . In some sense, there's nothing remarkable about a Democratic politician announcing support for marriage equality—between President Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and others, it's the mainstream position of the party. Whoever is the nominee in 2016 will almost certainly support same-sex marriage, and may even push for a national law to codify the right. Even still, it's not...

AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez Demonstrators chant during a rally against Proposition 8 outside City Hall in San Francisco, March 4, 2009. The Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the ban this week. T omorrow, I’m going to the Supreme Court to hear a bunch of lawyers debate the status of my marriage. Do I have a right to be married? Am I married just in Massachusetts, or in the United States at large? Simply attending the arguments feels like a high point in my career: I’ve written about and followed LGBT issues, and marriage in particular, for most of my adult life. I still remember sitting at my cousin’s wedding in 1993 when someone told me about the trial-court win in Baehr v. Lewin , the Hawaii marriage lawsuit that kicked off the past twenty years of marriage organizing. Before that, marriage hadn’t occurred to me—or many of us, back in the day—as something I could have. By 2003, I knew that we would win it, and in my lifetime. This will be...

Last Friday afternoon, the Obama administration surrendered on its latest attempt to fill one of four vacancies on the nation's second most-important court. Caitlin Halligan, facing a Republican filibuster, officially withdrew from consideration for a judgeship on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is not surprising or unexpected. Halligan, who was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Chief Justice John Roberts, had seen her nomination languish since 2010. The successful filibuster that snuffed Halligan's nomination early this March represents another example of why real reform or (better yet) elimination of the filibuster is desperately needed. The filibustering of Halligan is striking, even in the context of an utterly dysfunctional Senate, for two reasons. First, Halligan is a mainstream nominee , with broad support for her credentials and temperament from across the political spectrum. And second, Obama is the first president in at least 50 years not to get a single nominee...

During the 2012 presidential primaries, many conservatives complained about the media figures who moderated the 800 or so debates that the Republican candidates had to suffer through. Their beef was that these journalists, being journalists, were obviously in the tank for Barack Obama and could not be trusted to treat Republicans fairly. That wasn't really the problem, though. The problem was that most of the journalists who moderate presidential debates ask terrible questions, meant more to put candidates on the spot or produce a "gaffe" than to actually illuminate anything useful about them. I don't know how many times they have to ask inane questions like "What's your favorite Bible verse?" or whether the candidates prefer Elvis to Johnny Cash or deep dish to thin crust (yes, those were actually the topic of debate questions) before they start turning inward and wondering if they might be more substantive, but apparently the answer is never. So the Republican National Committee is...