In the College Conservative, contributor  Amy Miller has some thoughts on the Proposition 8 arguments and about how to handle news about these cases until decisions come down this June:

[T]he oral arguments on Hollingsworth v. Perry [the Proposition 8 case] provided plenty of meat for your next great Facebook debate, so let’s talk about them.

Standing arguments are not for the fainthearted. If you believe that the standing issue in Hollingsworth v. Perry is an easy call, you are either a 1L, or you do not understand what it means to have standing. The Court has never granted standing to the proponents of a ballot measure. Justice Ginsburg made a fantastic point right off the bat by pointing out that once an initiative has passed, the proponents no longer have a proprietary interest–it becomes law for them, just as it is for everyone else. On the flip side, however, Justice Kennedy raised concerns about allowing standing only to those with an established fiduciary interest to the state; by making this the standard, wouldn’t we be limiting recourse on initiatives to the whims of potentially hostile state officials?

Hell if we know!

Listen. The takeaway from the standing arguments is this: we don’t know. I don’t know. The parties don’t know. Roberts told everyone to move on, which tells me the Supremes either don’t know, or already know what they’re going to do and just enjoy playing with their food before they eat it. What I can promise you is that, unless this case crashes and burns on an issue of standing, you won’t be thinking about standing in the face of a ruling on the merits of this sexy, sexy issue.

The merits arguments happened; I’ll let you read them. Purpose of marriage vs. some weird equal protection standard that I’m still trying to reconcile with my Chemerinsky treatise. The petitioners ran with the procreation-and-family-stability argument, which counsel bolstered wonderfully in his rebuttal by finally remembering Loving v. Virginia’s “similarly situated to a legitimate purpose” standard. Respondents’ argument does not address this standard, because their position is partially founded on the idea that procreation is no longer part of the foundation of the marital institution.

Miller concludes:

From now until June, all I can do is encourage you to focus on the constitutional standard, and to not take the emotional bait the left is so continually successful in offering. Don’t get lazy and accept the premise that no standard can exist until society is ready for it. To do so would be to accept a far more disastrous precedent than could ever be set by a decision in favor of marriage equality.