With the recent spate of courts ruling that excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage is unconstitutional, it won’t be long before the U.S. Supreme Court gets involved again, says Emory law professor Michael Perry.

"There is little doubt that the Supreme Court will have to confront the constitutional issue sooner than it might have thought when it handed down its decision in the DOMA case last June," says Perry, a constitutional law expert

Perry said the rulings in New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia make it very likely that same-sex marriage will soon be recognized throughout the United States.

"In my judgment, the Supreme Court will rule within the next two or three years that refusing to recognize same-sex marriage violates the constitutional law of the United States," he says. "That decision will make many southerners, especially many older southerners, unhappy, but not nearly as unhappy as the school desegregation cases made many southerners 60 years ago."