Margaret Talbot takes the long view on the Prop 8 trial in California right now. Discussed: the historical context, the chances it'll end up at the Supreme Court, the importance of timing, the dissent among gay-rights groups who think the ballot box is the way to go, the odd-couple lawyers Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the Hollywood activists who are paying for it, the identity of the plaintiffs, the child of one of the plaintiffs who sees immediately how important this case could be ("One of the boys asked if their case was kind of like Brown v. Board of Education, which he was studying in school"), the Massachusetts case underway that could help the California case. It's a great primer on what's happening and why it matters, and the fallout of Prop 8 generally.

Toward the end of the piece Talbot travels to Orange County, "an area that, with its history as a headquarters for the aerospace industry and as a destination for whites fleeing Los Angeles, tends to be conservative."

Since June, Equality California has been sending canvassers to communities that voted for Proposition 8, and reports that it is persuading nearly a quarter of the people its volunteers meet....

I was assigned to a team with Shad, a low-key guy who wore sandals and baggy shorts. We drove to a neighborhood of neatly kept ranch-style houses, where cactuses and birds-of-paradise grew on freshly mowed lawns. Nearly everybody had set out some sort of harvest-themed decoration, and a lot of the houses displayed American flags.

Only one person was supposed to go to the door at a time—two people on your doorstep talking about their sexuality and the meaning of marriage was thought to be a little overbearing—so I waited on the sidewalk while Shad knocked on the first door. A woman who looked to be in her sixties, with a patchwork apron tied around her waist, and a voice that suggested origins in Brooklyn or Queens, appeared on her porch. When Shad told her why he was there, she said, “I’m very opposed—and I’m very passionate about it.”

“I’m gay,” Shad started in, but the woman cut him off.

“That’s fine that you’re doin’ what you’re doin’, but that’s your choice.”

Shad replied, “It was never a choice for me.”

The woman wiped her hands on her apron, and said, “I have grandchildren, and I’ve told them, ‘None of you are going to be gay, and if any of you are I’m going to do everything I can to ungay you.’ ”

(Mom? Is that you?) The piece ends at the pretrial hearing, with this satisfying exchange with the judge:

One of the arguments that the anti-gay-marriage side has increasingly turned to outside the courtroom is that allowing same-sex marriage would hurt heterosexual marriage. At the pretrial hearing, Judge Walker kept asking Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Proposition 8, how exactly it did so. “I’m asking you to tell me,” he said at last, “how it would harm opposite-sex marriages.”

“All right,” Cooper said.

“All right,” Walker said. “Let’s play on the same playing field for once.”

There was a pause—it seemed like a long one to people in the courtroom, though it was probably only a few seconds. And Cooper said, “Your Honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The whole essay is here.