If this was a political campaign, we would call it "momentum"

In a sense, it is a political campaign, with one grand three-day debate scheduled this month when SCOTUS holds hearings on two cases involving marriage equality, DOMA and Prop 8.  And then nine people will vote.

No question, there is a campaign going on in the very formal filing of legal briefs by interested parties.   They are called amicus curiae, or "friend of the court."   All manner of advocacy and mental health organizations, thirteen state governments, and the federal Department of Justice all filed briefs supporting marriage equality.   Last week an affidavit signed by 100 prominent Republicans weighed in -- also in favor.

As proof that this is a momentum in a positive direction, now corporate America is jumping on the bandwagon.    With the deadline for filing briefs being January 31st, more than 100 corporations, from Armani to Goldman Sachs, Home Depot, and Nike, are saying that it is not only the right thing to do -- but it is good for business.

It's actually that sense of momentum that brought the business community in.   They don't want to be late for the wedding, once they began to see its inevitability.   As some corporations began to do what had never before been done in civil rights cases before the court and file supportive briefs, they didn't want to be left out.  The last week became quite frenzied when yet another Fortune 100 corporation called wanting to know if it was too late to join a brief.

I am gratified, and really quite surprised, by how relatively quickly we have gone -- to borrow a title from a book by Harvard Law School professor Michael Klarman -- From the Closet to the Altar.

Will the campaign matter?   Legal purists will say No.   I disagree.   It may not sway Scalia and Thomas.   But I think Roberts and Kennedy are more mindful of the court as a part of our national cultural landscape and mindful of its place in history.

Ralph