you talk in the book that you had unfettered access to the plaintiff, their lawyers, to chad griffin who started the organization american foundatiofoundatio n for equal rights and now is the head of the human rights campaign which is the largest lgbt political advocacy group. so that most of an incredibly interesting. i personally love to be a fly on the wall stories and their many things in your accounting data for an interesting. i know you are on conference calls with them, could walk in and out of meetings, and the plaintiffs homes and got to go -- a tin of them quite well. did you have meals with them? did you have drinks with them? >> guest: i was with them for everything they did, so for instance, at the trial i a ride in san francisco, i took all of my vacation time at "the new york times" just to be in these rooms. and so i probably arrived i would guess eight or nine days before the trial as everybody was getting ready. what's kind of funny is i was moving from room to room as the lawyers were prepping witnesses and then back to the political war room where chad griffin wa

the guy who was the architect of all of this, a young political consultant by the name of chad griffin now the head of the human rights campaign, the largest air rights group in the world but that time was the sort of cooperative out of hollywood, he and his business barbara rubin together were the ones that came up with this idea said to it. that's great. if someone like this is willing to take this cause on, you know, that has the potential to change the conversation. once i started following the someone to know. i got some of the four plaintiffs. no one to know how little turns out. >> one of the amazing things about the book is so close a how did you get that access? >> i went to them he and said he writing a book is scary. you are sort of -- it is a big endeavor. i set the bar high thinking that they would probably say no. sorry about that. abcaeight. so anyhow he -- is this better? avenue. we can do that. so that is much better. yes. so so i forgot where we war. how did i get access? when to them and said that would really like to do this. i would like to follow the case all

and chad griffin's view it drives things like bullying in schools. it drives things like the fact that and teenagers have a higher suicide rate. it drives things like the higher rate of and homelessness. so from their point of view their point of view is what if another generation or five grades of kids grow up and are still being taught this. chris testified at the trial and she said if bands like proposition he did not exist biking california her entire life would have been left on a higher -- so from their point of view there is more -- no more time to wait and what if mitt romney had been elected instead of barack obama? that was a distinct possibility and came somewhat close to happening. one of the older liberal justices were to die and be replaced by romney. let there be even the possibility of five boats at that point in how much longer would he have to wait then? that's been a kind of thing about history. you can't predict it and it's hard to know how things would have turned out if it didn't play out the way it did. >> i have a broader ques