Supreme Court Hears Historic Gay Marriage Case

America's long simmering controversy over gay rights has come to the boil in the US Supreme Court.

Justices will start hearing arguments in a historic process that could end up authorising same-sex marriage across the country.

Four states - Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky - are defending their bans on such nuptials. Standing in their way are the cases of a dozen gay couples and two widowers.

Two-and-a-half hours of arguments will focus on two questions: Are bans on gay marriages constitutional?

And if they are, can states with such bans refuse to recognise out-of-state gay marriages performed where they are legal?

The fundamental right to marry and the rights to equality as claimed by gay people and their supporters must be weighed against the rights of states to interpret laws and the constitution as they see fit.

Feelings on the issue run strongest in America's Deep South in states such as Alabama. A federal judge there has ruled the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, even though it has been endorsed in a state-wide referendum that amended the state constitution.

For three weeks in January, gay marriages were allowed in Alabama before the Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore intervened. He ordered probate judges who issue marriage licences in Alabama to stop doing so to gay couples.

A standoff has ensued ever since.

Last week, Justice Moore received a medal in the name of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, awarded by the Coalition of Black Pastors.

The coalition's leader, William Owens, insisted gay marriage rights have nothing to do with civil rights.

He said: "The homosexual community copied the civil rights movement and found ways to say this is what Dr Luther King would have said. I know. I marched.

"It was never in our minds that this type of thing would happen. Never in our minds."

Justice Moore is an outspoken opponent of same sex marriage.

"They have to go by the law, not by their feelings, because if they go by their feeling they may marry the telephone post," he said of homosexual couples to Sky News.

"We have examples in England recently where a man married a dog. That definition can be expanded by whoever makes it."