Tracking the Proposition 8 trial

The U.S. Supreme Court today killed the idea of a delayed video broadcast of California’s federal court trial that will decide whether the voters of California can deny a gay couple a marriage license.

The high court ruled it needed more time to study the issue, even though the idea of cameras in courtrooms has been debated since fire was discovered.

“In the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is the most important relationship in life and of fundamental importance to all individuals,” former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson told a judge. Olson represents two gay couples seeking to overturn the November 2008 ban on gay marriage.

The trial is being live-blogged at several locations. The Courage Campaign Institute has one of the more detailed blogs, albeit with a point of view:

It’s hard to think while this goes on. I’ve never before been on trial, but today every gay or lesgbian person in the country is on trial. The testimony brings up all of that “stuff” that I keep pretending I’ve left behind. I grew up near Knoxville knowing I was gay, but never wanting to be. I dated girls, just like Jeff did. I hid from myself. I became an Orthodox Jew in LA and almost got married because I did not want to be gay. When Boies asked Jeff if he’d be in a more loving, stable relationship if he married a woman, it was not a throw-away. That’s what the NOM folks want you to believe. They want you to believe that if Jeff or me or so many others of us who were born homosexual would just marry a woman, the world would be a better place.

Reporter Dan Levine is sending updates via Twitter at @FedcourtJunkie.

He reported a few minutes ago, for example, that this ad is being debated in the courtroom.

A closed-circuit broadcast of the trial is also being shown at some federal courthouses across the country, but none of them is in Minnesota.