The two lead attorneys in the widely followed lawsuit seeking to overturn the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage in the state and the attorney who successfully argued the Supreme Court case that overturned anti-gay sodomy laws were honored this week in Washington.

The Cato Institute, an LGBT supportive libertarian think tank, held a forum on Wednesday that featured presentations by conservative Republican lawyer Theodore Olson and Democratic attorney David Boies, who have teamed up to fight Proposition 8.

D.C.'s Whitman-Walker Health, formerly known as Whitman-Walker Clinic, was scheduled to present Olson, Boies and Washington attorney Paul Smith with its Joel A. Toubin Memorial Award at a reception Thursday evening. The award recognizes their legal work in support of the rights of LGBT people.

Smith was the lead attorney challenging state sodomy laws in the 2003 case known as Lawrence v. Texas, in which the high court ruled that laws banning intimate sexual relations between people of the same sex in the privacy of their home were unconstitutional.

In interviews with the Blade, Olson and Smith each said they were hopeful that the Lawrence decision would provide an important legal foundation for the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8 when that case reaches the high court possibly within the next two years.