Cleopatra wants to be married, in Texas, to another woman. She already said “I do” in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal, but Texas law won’t recognize her marriage to anyone but a Marc Antony type.

Cleopatra de Leon and her spouse, Nicole Dimetman, and another couple — Victor Holmes and Mark Phariss, who were denied a marriage license in Texas last year — have taken their challenge to the state’s ban on same-sex marriage to federal court. A judge in San Antonio is expected to decide Wednesday whether to grant a temporary injunction that would block the state from enforcing the ban while the case is litigated.

The San Antonio case is among dozens of same-sex marriage cases wending their way through courts across the country in a whirlwind of legal activity in the gay rights movement.

At the same time, four publicly out lesbians known as the San Antonio Four were recently released from prison — 19 years after they were charged with molesting the two young nieces of one of the defendants. They were convicted and sentenced in 1998. Attorneys for the women used a new law to challenge the conviction on the basis that the testimony provided by a pediatrician that was critical in the case was unreliable and outdated.

The two cases — in the same city, nearly two decades apart — both hinge on challenging scientific claims. While the release of the San Antonio Four has become a symbol of advances in the gay rights movement, the same-sex marriage debate echoes a more hostile past toward gays and lesbians. At their roots, both cases turn on the anxieties, prejudices and persistent notions about the suspected adverse effect of gays and lesbians on children.

“That stereotype clearly influenced the San Antonio Four case and will be repeated in the state of Texas in its defense of its (same-sex) marriage ban,” said Clifford Rosky, a law professor at the University of Utah. But “they are not going to say a threat to children.”

In today’s parlance, he said, arguments are framed in terms of what is the “optimal environment” for children.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in San Antonio submitted dozens of pages, including court opinion, expert testimony, book excerpts and academic articles plus position statements from associations such as the Child Welfare League of America, the American Academy of Pediatricians and the American Psychological Association, that refute any claims of adverse effects in well-being or development experienced by children raised by same-sex parents.

Among the dozens of supporting documents, the plaintiffs’ attorneys included a 2004 statement by the APA that they sought to discount. The APA’s 10-year-old statement outlined “common fears” about the influence of gay and lesbian parents on children, including susceptibility to mental breakdown, sexual-identity issues and a fear that “children living with gay and lesbian parents will be more likely to be sexually abused by their partner or by the partner’s friend or acquaintance.” Social science research, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ statement, has failed to confirm any of these concerns.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, in defending the voter-approved ban, described the suggestion of anti-gay bias as “ugly.”

In written arguments, the state cites its interest in promoting “responsible procreation and child rearing.” Similar arguments are being used in other states where same sex marriage cases are pending.

The state punctuated its argument by saying changes to marriage should be postponed “until such time as there is unanimous scientific evidence, or popular consensus, or both, that such changes can safely be made.”