Outside the courts, lawyers from both sides made their final appeals — to the cameras that will carry their message to the public at large and also, they hope, to justices ahead of their final deliberations.

It was also an opportunity for the faces of the 2012 cake stand-off to speak directly.

Social conservatives worked hard to make this case about Jack Phillips, the baker, and he laid out the bones of his case directly to reporters: “I serve everyone” and that refusals to supply a cake “are never about the person,” he said, as well as describing himself as a “cake artist.” Chants of “We’ve got Jack’s back” were the major message from Alliance Defending Freedom activists outside the court.

But gay-rights advocates were equally eager to make the case about “David and Charlie,” the same-sex couple who went to Mr. Phillips’s shop, and for whom they chanted periodically outside the court Tuesday. David Mullins made the closing pitch for himself and his side, saying that Mr. Phillips had effectively denied him the cake based on his identity after “we told him it was for us.” He also emphasized the personal effects to him of what he considered to be discrimination, saying that “we were mortified” and that while he was embarrassed to admit it, “I cried, Charlie cried.”