"[S]tanding up for traditional marriage has turned out to be too much for the elite bar."

Adam Liptak writes.

In dozens of interviews, lawyers and law professors said the imbalance in legal firepower in the same-sex marriage cases resulted from a conviction among many lawyers that opposition to such unions is bigotry akin to racism. But there were economic calculations, too. Law firms that defend traditional marriage may lose clients and find themselves at a disadvantage in hiring new lawyers.

But some conservatives say lawyers and scholars who support religious liberty and oppose a constitutional right to same-sex marriage have been bullied into silence. �The level of sheer desire to crush dissent is pretty unprecedented,� said Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge who teaches law at Stanford.