NASHVILLE (BP) -- Next week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear
arguments on same-sex marriage, a high-stakes moment for both
American society and for the court itself. On Tuesday the Court
will hear arguments on California's Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth
v. Perry) case. The next day, the Court will review the federal
Defense of Marriage Act in U.S. v. Windsor.  Just like in Roe v
Wade, a case widely discredited by legal scholars as poor law
and credited by conservatives as the spark that ignited
Christian activism, the court has a massive challenge ahead of
it -- threading the needle between state's rights and the press
of coastal public opinion.  I'll address Hollingsworth v. Perry
today and U.S. v. Windsor tomorrow.  The California case has the
potential for far-flung reverberations in all 50 states. In the
Proposition 8 case, the court will decide whether to overturn a
lower federal court's renunciation of Proposition 8, in which
the voters of California voted to amend their state constitution
to define marri