It’s here. Forget for a moment any quibbles you may have had with the strategy that got us here. Forget all the other important priorities that were already forgotten along the way. Forget your private doubts about whether marriage equality was the right fight at the right time for the right reasons. Forget all that – because the moment is here.

Late this month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Bourke v. Beshear, as well as three similar cases, to decide the fate of marriage equality in America. Advocates on both sides of the issue expect the court to side with equality, thanks to Justice Kennedy’s track record as author of nearly every landmark gay rights case the court has heard since 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas.

Even in the darkest days of the 2004 campaign, when LGBT people played the bogeyman to President Bush’s moral crusader, I remember feeling the urgent, yet unspoken, anticipation of the day when a case like Bourke would come to the rescue. But an oft-forgotten lesson of the civil rights movement(s) is that judgemade law is painfully fragile. Since Roe v.

Wade and Brown v. Board of Education, the fight for reproductive rights seems no more settled than it was in 1972, and a racial performance gap still ravages America’s public schools. Opinions of judges may push the envelope of civil rights, but they can never seal the deal.

Now is the time for equality advocates to start talking about the next step.

What is the case for gay rights going to look like in a post-Bourke America? I think we know, or can safely guess, what the other side is going to do. They have a playbook, and they usually stick to it. As they did with Roe, they will make Bourke the new litmus test for all judicial nominees – and vote against each of them who sides with us. In the meantime, what exists now as a haphazard collection of interest groups and elected officials will become a well-organized, well-funded operation to undermine Bourke in the red (and purple) states. Look to the recent chaos in Alabama, where Chief Justice Roy Moore has instructed probate judges across the state to withhold marriage licenses from gay couples in defiance of the Supreme Court. Before long, we could be confronted with rowdy demonstrations outside county clerks’ offices all over the country, harassing gay couples as they enter the doors.

This much, we can expect; this much, we can plan for.

I’m sure some will claim that their playbook just won’t work this time, that popular support for marriage equality, especially among young people, will withstand their assaults. I don’t think much of this argument. For starters, our base of support is among 18-to-29-year-olds, otherwise known as the least-reliable voting demographic. And while it helped in 2012 that, according to the National Exit Poll, 34 percent of voters said gay marriage was an important issue to them, how long can we sustain that trend after the Supreme Court has already ruled on the question? How long before voters in the East and West, where support is strong, tune out the conduct of conservative legislatures in the Plains and Southern states, where it remains weak?

What follows the court’s decisions in Bourke and its affiliates will be a period of soul-searching for equality advocates. So I guess we can’t forget all our motivations and doubts – at least, not for very long. Because this moment, too, shall pass. As sure as the season finale of “Looking” and Hillary’s nomination, the conservative revival is coming. Will we be ready for it?

Matthew Titus of Springfield is an MPA candidate at the University of Illinois Springfield. He is a veteran organizer and field director for grassroots campaigns in Grand Rapids, St. Louis and southeast Kansas.