There are many ways to frame the gay-marriage trial taking place this week in San Francisco: it’s either a piece of Vegas-style showboating by former Bush v. Gore adversaries David Boies and Theodore Olson, or a noble quest for marital equality in America. But perhaps the most potent framing casts it as a grand battle between elitist, antidemocratic courts on the one hand and ordinary Americans on the other. That storyline suffered a major hit when the anti-gay-marriage team waged an epic fight to prevent the trial from being broadcast.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger promises to be a sprawling exploration into every aspect of the fight over gay marriage. But beneath all the social science there lies a deep institutional anxiety about whether California voters or the federal courts should be the arbiters of what marriage means. Opponents of gay rights have argued against allowing unelected judges to substitute their values for those of the American people. As an argument, it has legs. It’s populist. It’s catchy. But it’s awfully hard to be a populist when you’ve come out against broadcasting the trial.

Read the rest of Dahlia Lithwick’s Newsweek article here.