Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker Magazine has written the story that I hoped someone would write with regard to the challenge to Proposition 8 that is being heard right now in a San Francisco courtroom (It began last week) but that, as Talbot notes, is almost certain to eventually land in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Talbot writes:

Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California referendum that, in November, 2008, overturned a state Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. Its lead lawyers are unlikely allies: Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and a prominent conservative; and David Boies, the Democratic trial lawyer who was his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore. The two are mounting an ambitious case that pointedly circumvents the incremental, narrowly crafted legal gambits and the careful state-by-state strategy that leading gay-rights organizations have championed in the fight for marriage equality. The Olson-Boies team hopes for a ruling that will transform the legal and social landscape nationwide, something on the order of Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, or Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

In other words, if Ted Olson and David Boies are successful in getting the Perry case to the Supreme Court and then persuading the Supremes of the merit of the case, they will not simply overturn California’s Prop 8. That, my dears, will be the ball game.

Yet, if the challenge fails, supporters worry quite rightly that it will set back the cause of gay marriage for a very, very long time.

So, what drew conservative, Federalist Society member Ted Olson to this issue? And why has his one-time adversary David Boies joined with him? And why have they launched the case now—when many gay legal rights experts warned against a new court challenge at a time that the majority of public opinion does not yet support it?

Margaret Talbot covers all of this and more. Plus she lays out the legal thinking that has caused Olson and Boies to decide that the time was now, not later.

In addition to reading the article, do check out Terry Gross’s interview with Talbot on Wednesday’s Fresh Air.

(I recommend paying special attention to the legal concept of “strict scrutiny” that Talbot explains to Terry around or a little after the 17:50 minute mark. It is an intriguing term could be critical to the case’s failure or success. )

Even though Talbot is in D.C., she has been following various experts and advocates who are inside the courtroom tweeting and live blogging the fabulously dramatic, character-rich and anecdote-filled case, and then she has blogged her own daily analysis. (Oh, brave new interactive world.)

Much has gone into the formation of this case. And much has been arrayed against it. Margaret Talbot has done us the favor of giving us the case’s background—in the form of the legal and the human details.

Should voters toss the chief justice in 2010?

It doesn’t take a legal scholar to point out the obvious reason why the California Supreme Court, led by Ron George, got it so wrong in their ruling that denied gays the right to marry. They saw the ghost of Rose Bird and feared the anti-gay-rights mob would recall them.

George et al continues to fool some of my better-informed friends and colleagues, including the editorial writers at the L.A. Times. For amusement — and motivation to act — check out today’s solo editorial, which seeks to draw lessons of a corrupt West Virginia high court jurist for California. We’re advised, of course, not to recall George in 2010 because it’s not like he was on the take from corporate interests when he bungled the gay-marriage ruling. Nice logic if you believe money trumps rights.

The cowardly George takes hero status in the editorial for bowing to the will of the people only months after upholding the legal foundation of same-sex unions. Maybe we should induct him into the Flip Floppers Hall of Fame when we vote to keep him on the high court next year.

In the gay-marriage cases, George’s votes demonstrated conscience, professionalism and restraint. He voted to uphold same-sex unions out of the strong conviction — which this page shares — that the Constitution does not allow society to deny the protection of marriage to gay couples any more than it once denied it to those united across race. The ruling was right on the law, and will certainly be validated over the long march of history.

Months later, voters tacked in the other direction, narrowly rejecting gay marriage and amending the Constitution to allow California to recognize only the unions of heterosexual couples… George subordinated his politics — as evidenced by his writing — to the weight of constitutional opinion. He voted to uphold the proposition, even though it undid his own work. Permitted latitude within the strictures of the Constitution in the first case, George was able to vote his conscience; bound by the Constitution in the second case, he yielded…

This is not West Virginia. Corporate interests are not knocking off justices who disagree with them and seating more accommodating replacements. But intimidation has no place in our judicial life any more than it does in Appalachia. The 1986 campaign against Bird and her colleagues now stands for many as a reminder that well-intentioned systems of accountability may be hijacked by special interests, a lesson learned too often and at great cost in California. It was misguided in its first iteration; it would be regrettable in its second.

In fact, maybe it’s worse — or at least as bad — as in West Virginia.