Looking for Time Bombs and Tea Leaves on “Gay Marriage”

Adam Liptak writes at the NY Times: “All it said was this: ‘Our decisions have declined to distinguish between status and conduct in this context.’ But the context mattered. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, was talking about laws affecting gay men and lesbians. Slipping that thought into a case about the treatment of a Christian student group reminded some of a technique perfected by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., whose fellow justices were wary of his “time bombs . . . ‘The court is talking about gay people, not homosexuals, and about people who have a social identity rather than a class of people who engage in particular sex acts,’ Professor Goldberg said.”