American Foundation for Equal Rights

Washington Post: High court’s broadcast ruling under microscope

It was a hastily written ruling by Supreme Court standards, and it carried a dissent almost equal in length to the majority’s opinion. But the 5 to 4 decision the court issued late Wednesday blocking the broadcast of a federal trial about the constitutionality of same-sex marriage is being scoured by legal analysts and activists for deeper meaning.

Many are finding a hint of sympathy for those who oppose same-sex marriage. An unmistakable worry about how cameras could transform what the ruling called the “orderly, decorous, rational traditions” of the courts. Some even detect a whiff of Bush v. Gore.

“It is almost classic Freudian,” said Andrew Koppelman, a law professor at Northwestern University, “in that it is talking about one thing, but really seems to mean something else.”

Although the ruling went out of its way to emphasize its own limits — “Our review is confined to a narrow legal issue,” the majority said — the ideological split in voting drew speculation about what it portended for a court that is likely to decide the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.

Read the rest of Fred Barnes’s Washington Post article here.