"This is un-American. My state is supposed to protect me, not discriminate against me."

So said Paul Katami yesterday in the historic legal challenge to California's Proposition 8.

That ballot question, place on the ballot by initiative petition, was motivated solely by religious fundamentalism and was approved by voters based on appeals to their fears and their blind prejudices.

And it's nothing but bloody discrimination in favor of heterosexuals, even the worst kinds thereof.

As Ted Olson has said,

At the end of the day, whatever the motives of its Proponents, Proposition
8 enacted an utterly irrational regime to govern entitlement to the fundamental
right to marry, consisting now of at least four separate and distinct classes of
citizens: (1) heterosexuals, including convicted criminals, substance abusers
and sex offenders, who are permitted to marry; (2) 18,000 same-sex couples
married between June and November of 2008, who are allowed to remain married but
may not remarry if they divorce or are widowed; (3) thousands of same-sex
couples who were married in certain other states prior to November of 2008,
whose marriages are now valid and recognised in California; and, finally (4) all
other same-sex couples in California who, like the plaintiffs, are prohibited
from marrying by Proposition 8.

There is no rational justification for this unique pattern of
discrimination. Proposition 8, and the irrational pattern of California's
regulation of marriage which it promulgates, advances no legitimate state
interest. All it does is label gay and lesbian persons as inferior,
unequal, and disfavored. And it brands their relationships as not the
same, and less-approved than those enjoyed by opposite-sex couples. It
stigmatizes gays and lesbians, classifies them as outcasts,and causes needless
pain, isolation and humiliation.

In a nutshell, the proposition humiliated and shamed us in order to advance a blind prejudice that I call heterosexual supremacy. And goes against the state's interest in encouraging people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex and straight alike, to commit to stable, lifelong, monogamous civil and sacred unions based on love. And inadvertently reduces the importance heterosexuals' relationships to simply breeding children.

It is a crime against humanity that must be ruled Unconstitutional.