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 Religious leaders are calling on members of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing to recuse themselves from the blockbuster gay marriage case that the court will begin considering on Tuesday. 
 
 Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, told reporters he’s filing a motion with the Supreme Court calling for the recusal of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. 
 
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 “Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, knowing full well that unique legal issues regarding the definition of marriage would soon come before them, deliberately officiated at so-called homosexual wedding ceremonies creating not merely the appearance of bias, but an actual and blatant conflict of interest,” he said. 
 
 “In my personal view they have committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics by elevating the importance of their own favored political cause of gay rights above the integrity of the court and of our nation.” 
 
 The case before the court, known as Obergefell v. Hodges, stems from a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky. The court has grouped the appeals from the couples in the four states together and will hear two and a half hours of arguments Tuesday morning, 90 minutes more than the court typically allows. 
 
 In their rulings, the justices will seek to answer whether states are required to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and whether states have to recognize same-sex marriage licenses from other states under the 14th Amendment. 
 
 Lively said Kagan and Ginsburg's “vividly demonstrated disposition” in favor of the same-sex couples shows they are unable to render a fair judgment. 
 
 He and more than a dozen leaders of anti-gay-marriage groups stood behind a wall of empty cardboard filing boxes stacked on the steps of the court on Monday morning. 
 
 The boxes — 60 in all — were there to "symbolically" represent 300,000 restraining orders that Faith2Action President Janet Porter said will be delivered to the Supreme Court and to Congress to keep the justices from ruling on gay marriage. 
 
 “We have appealed to Congress to restrain the judges, and the good news is Congress has heard our cry,” Porter said. 
 
 Last week, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced the Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015, which would remove jurisdiction to rule on gay marriage from federal courts. In the Senate, Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzGroup aiming to draft Beto O’Rourke unveils first 2020 video Howard Dean looking for a 'younger, newer' Democratic nominee in 2020 Congress can stop the war on science MORE (R-Texas) has introduced The Protect Marriage from the Courts Act, which would also limit the federal courts’ jurisdiction to consider same-sex marriage cases. 
 
 “Congress has the ability to remove appellate jurisdiction,” Porter said. “What that means is, we can actually take from them their right to rule on marriage before they even rule on marriage.” 
 
 During the press conference, Larry Sternbane, 51, stood quietly back behind the crowd holding a sign that read, “Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get gay married.” 
 
 “This right here is the last gasp of a group that is losing this issue in the public square,” he said. “They are talking to themselves. There are a bunch of tourists listening, and the only ones clapping when somebody ends is them.” ||||| The tide might be turning in favor of gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court will be swept up in it. 
 
 For all the toasting in Washington and excitement among gay rights groups about the historic oral arguments this week, there’s still a chance their set of cases could culminate in a loss. 
 
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 Under the worst-case scenario for gay rights groups, the court could uphold both California’s Proposition 8 and the federal law Defense of Marriage Act — extending no new rights to gay couples looking to marry or take advantage of federal benefits extended to opposite-sex couples. 
 
 But gay rights activists say this wouldn’t have the impact of Plessy v. Ferguson — the 1896 decision that left “separate but equal” the law of the land until Brown v. Board of Education six decades later. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Culture wars return — with a twist) 
 
 Instead, they say, they would still leave the court in a better position than when they started their legal trek because public opinion has swung in their favor, supporters have been galvanized and about 100 prominent Republicans signed a brief publicly endorsing gay marriage. 
 
 “Even if you lose the case, and I think that’s very unlikely, you would say that the case has been a success because it’s changed public opinion so dramatically,” said Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton. “It’s really unbelievable what a successful communications and litigation strategy has combined to do in such a short time.” 
 
 Plus, they don’t think they’re going to lose big at all. 
 
 “There’s zero possibility,” said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone. 
 
 One key source of confidence is Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority ruling 17 years ago in Romer v. Evans, a case throwing out a Colorado ballot measure that banned any special protections for gays and lesbians. Many analysts believe that decision and a 2003 ruling he wrote banning sodomy laws essentially guarantee Kennedy will vote to find the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. With the four Democratic-appointed justices thought to favor at least that much of a win for gay rights, Kennedy would make a majority. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Poll: Court approval near record low) 
 
 Other potential GOP pickups for the pro-same sex marriage forces are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. 
 
 For those reading tea leaves, there are signs Roberts could be in play. While in private practice in 1995, Roberts gave pro bono help to the legal team preparing briefs and oral arguments for the Colorado case. And Roberts is using some of his personal allotment of tickets to this week’s arguments to allow a lesbian cousin and her partner to attend oral arguments, the Los Angeles Times reported. 
 
 Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are considered pretty certain votes against same-sex marriage. Scalia defended the Colorado measure as “a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws.” Thomas joined the opinion. 
 
 (PHOTOS: 21 landmark SCOTUS rulings) 
 
 There is one potential wild card on the left: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Though she was a pioneering litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union on gender issues, she has repeatedly said she thinks the Roe v. Wade decision went too far because it forced a consensus that many Americans had not arrived at and led to a backlash. 
 
 “It’s not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far too fast,” she said at Columbia Law School last year. “The court made a decision that made every abortion law in the country invalid, even the most liberal. … Things might have turned out differently if the court had been more restrained.”
– The second of two landmark gay rights cases is before the Supreme Court today, but supporters of marriage equality can take heart even if the decisions don't go their way, says New York Times stats whiz Nate Silver. Support for gay marriage hasn't surged recently, he finds, but it has been steadily increasing since around 2004 and supporters are almost certain to be in the majority nationwide soon. Gay marriage would probably have lost in a national referendum last year, but would narrowly win in 2016, according to Silver's projections. The steady rise in support means ballot initiatives to legalize gay marriage would succeed in 32 states by 2016 and in 44 states by 2020, with support above 48% in every state except Alabama and Mississippi, Silver projects. It is "the steadiness of the trend that makes same-sex marriage virtually unique among all major public policy issues, and which might give its supporters more confidence that the numbers will continue to break their way regardless of what the Supreme Court decides," he writes. (Click for Silver's full column.) Bill O'Reilly is also surveying the landscape, and Politico reports that he agrees that the wind is at the back of gay marriage advocates: "The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals," he said on his show last night; they "just want to be treated like everybody else. The other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible."