If Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and Florida go decisively for Obama, those of us on the east coast may have a pretty good idea of who the next president will be and still get a good night’s sleep.

But there’s at least one contest that’s certainly worth waiting up for – the fight to defeat Prop 8 in California, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex couples from getting married. The polls don’t close until 11 p.m. eastern time, and the results probably won’t be known until well after that.

While you’re waiting up, you can use the time to read Andrew Sullivan’s short, lovely piece on his own nuptials and what they say about the institution of marriage in America.

The wedding occurred last August in Massachusetts in front of a small group of family and close friends. And in that group, I suddenly realized, it was the heterosexuals who knew what to do, who guided the gay couple and our friends into the rituals and rites of family. Ours was not, we realized, a different institution, after all, and we were not different kinds of people. In the doing of it, it was the same as my sister’s wedding and we were the same as my sister and brother-in-law. The strange, bewildering emotions of the moment, the cake and reception, the distracted children and weeping mothers, the morning’s butterflies and the night’s drunkenness: this was not a gay marriage; it was a marriage.