those of us not lucky enough to be in the supreme court today were busy looking for scotus blogs.he conventional wisdom was it was more or less a foregone conclusion that there were at least five and maybe even six votes in favor of enshrining same-sex marriage as the law of the land. now that you have reviewed what went down in the court today, do you think it is still the case that it is a foregone conclusion? mark: reading tea leaves is kind of silly. it is either going to be 5-4 or 6-3. if you go either way. i still think if you look at the history of what justice kennedy has done in these issues, i think it will have five votes at least. i think there is a possibility they get justice roberts. john: people misunderstand the purpose of the oral arguments. the justices are asking questions. justice roberts asked questions that seemed soto suggest that it could be in the political level. he also raised the point that it is not sexual discrimination. he is trying to persuade people. these are not just expressions of opinion. they are asking questions of better strategic. you can

you can get the link at scotus blog. but he is the lawyer who set the stage for marriage equality with his victory in 2003. in lawrence versus texas. on my far right is sarah warbelow, the leader of a team of lawyers focused on state and local policies and coordinating efforts on lgbt issues. we are going to start with paul. we are going to talk about the cases and look forward at what the case is might mean for the future. paul will take us back to 1972 and baker versus nelson. then he will talk about how he got from baker versus nelson to the defense of marriage act during the clinton administration. mr. smith: it is a long road. a lot of people ask how we get to marriage equality and the reality is we have been working hard for a long time. you want to have a starting point. that is bigger versus nelson in 1972, in which the court was asked to recognize the right of a same-sex couple to marry. they dismissed the appeal. it was a one line rejection of the claim. this was at a time when we were not in the stone age, at