Conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t appear inclined to overturn marriage equality — but can she be trusted?

Barrett calls the right to marry “fundamental” in her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, which comes out Tuesday. However, she has previously said the matter should be up to each state. And in her confirmation hearings in 2020, she was cagey about whether she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide, butin 2022 she voted to overturn it.

Meanwhile, panelists at the National Conservatism Conference, held this week in Washington, D.C., discussed the possible reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that established marriage equality in every state.

In her book, Barrett writes, “The court has held that the rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control, and raise children are fundamental, but the rights to do business, commit suicide, and obtain abortion are not.”

Barrett recently told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News that she hopes to help readers “understand the law.” It’s not just an opinion poll,” she said.

“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” she said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”

Barrett was evasive about her views on marriage equality during her confirmation hearings. But she had previously suggested it should be decided state by state.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton recently said she expects the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to overturn Obergefell. “It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she told Jessica Tarlov of The Five in a podcast interview. “The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage. My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion. They will send it back to the states.”

Last month, Kim Davis, the former clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, asked the Supreme Court to hear her case challenging Obergefell. Davis, a conservative Christian, quit issuing marriage licenses altogether after the ruling so she wouldn’t have to issue them to same-sex couples. The high court justices haven’t said if they’ll take the case.

Some political observers disagree with Clinton, saying the Supreme Court likely doesn’t want to revisit marriage equality, even though two ultraconservative members — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — have said they’d like to overturn it.

Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek that Barrett’s comments in her book and to CBS indicate she’s “not inclined to overturn the right to same-sex marriage.” She has sometimes gone against other conservative justices.

“As to whether other justices share her apparent view, I would further guess that at least Justice Thomas would not agree with her,” Rossi added. “In the end, my prediction is that a majority of the court will stand firm and preserve the right to same-sex marriage.”

O’Donnell’s interview on with Barrett will air on CBS Sunday Morning at 9 a.m. Sunday and at 11 a.m. on CBS News 24/7.

If the court did overturn Obergefell, there would be some protection from the Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It requires federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages, and requires states to recognize those performed in other states. However, no state would have to offer equal marriage rights.

In addition to Davis, there are other right-wing forces who would like to see the ruling reversed. At the National Conservatism Conference’s “Overturn Obergefell” panel Thursday, participants portrayed marriage equality as the source of many societal ills, including harm to children — something debunked by many studies.

“The last 10 years have made one thing unmistakably clear: We can either recognize gay marriage, or we can recognize a child’s right to the mother and father. We can’t do both,” anti-LGBTQ+ activist Katy Faust said at the event, according to The Washington Times. “If we are to retake legal marriage, we highlight the real victims, the children starved of maternal or paternal love, acquired by predators, mass produced, trafficked across borders, struggling with identity confusion, subjected to risky households.”

“If an adult can assemble sperm, egg, and womb — and ‘intend’ to parent the child —they get the baby,” she said. “Biologically related or not. Pedophile or not. Retiree or not. Foreign national or not. Intent-based parentage is child trafficking disguised as constitutional rights. Gay marriage did that.”

“The moment the state has the power to assign parenthood to strangers, it can unassign it from you,” she added. “Your legal relationship to the children you’ve begotten is weaker than it was a decade ago. Make no mistake. Gay marriage did that.”

Jeff Shafer, director of the Hale Institute, a conservative think tank, said that “Obergefell requires the gender neutralization of indelibly sexed legal standards. The whole point of Obergefell’s audacity was to knock over a cultural pillar that defines and orients a whole legal framework.”

Orthodox Rabbi Ilan Feldman put in, “Marriage is not for us to redefine. It’s God’s plan for the world,” ignoring that the U.S. is not a theocracy and that different faiths have different ideas about marriage.

Another on the panel was longtime anti-LGBTQ+ activist John Eastman, a close ally of Donald Trump. He was forced to resign as a law professor at Chapman University because of his role in the rally that preceded the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection, and he has been disbarred. But he’s still out there trying to end marriage equality.

He said he’s encouraged by the fact that after Davis filed her request with the Supreme Court, the court asked for a response from the gay couple who sued her over her denial of their marriage license. She wants to avoid paying damages to them as well as having the court overturn Obergefell.

The request for a response indicates the high court is interested in the case, he said at the conference, according to The Washington Times, although he thinks the court may limit itself to religious freedom concerns. “We should be very clear in the Kim Davis case, this wasn’t about the couple being able to get a marriage certificate under the auspices of Obergefell — they got one,” he added. “It was getting it from her despite her religious objection. It was an Orwellian bend-the-knee move.”