The first week of the historic Proposition 8 trial ended Friday with equal parts raw emotion and hotly debated expert testimony

The emotion came from Helen Zia, a San Francisco-based writer who married her partner, Lia, in 2008, making it down the aisle a few months before voters restored California’s ban on same-sex weddings through Proposition 8. And the expert testimony came from glib Cambridge University professor Michael Lamb, who vouched for the ability of same-sex couples to raise children.

The daylong testimony symbolized the nature of the plaintiffs’ approach all week in the bid to overturn Proposition 8 in the first trial ever held in federal court involving a challenge to a state’s right to outlaw same-sex marriage.

All week, the trial was a blend of first-person accounts from gays and lesbians who recounted discrimination against their relationships, and the testimony of experts called to explore everything from the economic impact of denying same-sex marriage to the merits of gay parenting.

Read the rest of Howard Mintz’s San Jose Mercury article here.