Those supporting the right to marry have been afraid that the most conservative supreme court in decades will eventually overturn Judge Walker's decision which found that Prop 8 violates equal protection and due process, by denying same sex couples the same right to marry that opposite sex couples have.
Now, however, evangelicals are also afraid that the Supreme Court will affirm Judge Walker's decision, and wipe out all of the same-sex marriage bans across the country.
A recent article in Mother Jones quotes David Barton, a Christian activist and former vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party as stating
"Right now, the damage is limited to California only," Barton noted. But he feared that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in an appeal, "will go for California, which means that all 31 states [that have banned gay marriage] will go down in flames."
According to the article, evangelicals may be happy to drop the appeal and let California be the "gay state," rather than risk an adverse decision. They base this fear on swing vote, Justice Kennedy's past history of voting to abolish anti-sodomy laws, and to hold that an anti-gay initiative in Colorado is unconstitutional.
As Barton stated:
Well, I'm telling you, that's what's being argued by a lot of folks now. . .Knowing what Kennedy has already done in two similar cases to this and knowing that he's the deciding vote, the odds are 999 out of 1000 that they'll uphold the California decision.
If they do, there's not a marriage amendment in the country that can stand. And so the problem is that instead of California losing its amendment, now 31 states lose their amendment. And that won't happen if California doesn't appeal its decision. It's just California that loses its amendment.