Nan Hunter | The Nation

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Supreme Court argument in the California gay marriage case in a word: fractured. The Justices steered arguments back and forth between standing questions (whether a private group of Prop 8 proponents could assume the mantle of state officials to defend Prop 8) and the constitutional merits: whether it is permissible for a state to deny gay couples access to marriage. Toward the end of the argument, things got even more fractured, as Justices debated with the lawyers and among themselves whether unconstitutionality was an all or nothing proposition, or whether, paradoxically, only states like California that have extended all marital rights except the label itself would be forced to go all the way to full equality, leaving for another day the question of whether states that offer no legal protection were acting constitutionally.

The Supreme Court in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In case you haven’t noticed, the biggest question facing the Supreme Court when it decides the gay marriage cases this spring has become whether it can rise to the level of LGBT rights ferocity already achieved by American business leaders, moderate Republicans and the Obama administration. By the end of last week, when all the amicus briefs in support of striking down California’s Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) had been filed, support for marriage equality seemed to have been transformed into the new normal—at least outside the confines of the Court.