RECAP: Day 1 of High Profile Marriage Equality Trial

The following summary was provided by mercurynews.com. They are also featuring an amazing photo gallery that can be viewed directly from their site. Take a look, the photos are truly amazing.

4:11 p.m.: Court adjourns for the day
The Prop 8 trial has adjourned for its first day. Cott is still on the stand, testifying about the history and cultural significance of marriage in American society. The testimony is often dry, but appears designed to back up the plaintiffs argument that same-sex couples are being denied a crucial equal right. Cott rejected the notion that domestic partnership protections, no matter how strong, equate with marriage. “There is no comparison in my historical view,” she told the judge. “There is nothing like marriage except marriage.”

Cott returns to the stand Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m.

3:24 p.m.: Plaintiffs end testimony; first expert witness called
It’s on to the experts in the Proposition 8 trial. Stier just completed her stay on the stand. The plaintiffs have called their first academic, Nancy Cott, a Harvard University historian and expert on American marriage history and issues involving women and families.

3:12 p.m.: Judge asks: What if state got out of marriage business?
Judge Walker, largely silent since the four plaintiffs started testifying, broke out with a tough question for Stier as she discussed the distinction between domestic partnership and marriage. The judge was clearly intrigued by the fact that Stier has been in both worlds, having been married to a husband for 12 years, and now in a domestic partnership with Perry for more than nine years. After Stier testified that “it’s not the same” without the marriage license, Walker broke in and asked how she’d react if the state got out of the marriage business for everyone, including heterosexual couples. Would she still feel the same about the term “marriage”? the judge asked. Would that put her “on the same plane” with heterosexual couples? he asked.

Stier pondered the question for a moment.

“I believe it would,” she replied, “because there wouldn’t be anything different” in how the state treats her relationship. The trial day is drawing to a close in less than an hour.

3:01 p.m.: Growing up gay in Bakersfield
Perry just completed her testimony, a bare-bones description of what it’s been like for her to grow up a lesbian in conservative Bakersfield and now find herself fighting for the right to marry. Perhaps her most emotional moment came when she described attending football games with Stier at the high school where two of their four boys go, and going into the stands with the other parents. Perry scrunched up her face and said when she looks around, all she thinks is, “They’re all married “… and I’m not.”

She dismissed the idea that her domestic partnership with Stier is enough. She also recounted going to the Alameda County clerk’s office last May in an attempt to get a marriage license, only to get turned away by a “nervous” supervisor who told the couple Proposition 8 prevented them from marrying. “There’s something so humiliating about everybody knowing you want to make some decision, and you don’t get to,” she testified.

Proposition 8 lawyers did not question Perry. Stier has just taken the stand, going through her background, including one failed heterosexual marriage before her relationship with Perry.

2:29 p.m.: Berkeley woman describes relationship with partner
Kristin Perry, a Berkeley woman, has taken the witness stand, describing her relationship with her partner, Sandy Stier, and why she wants the right to marry. Under questioning from her lawyer, Theodore Olson, she was asked why she became a plaintiff in the groundbreaking legal fight. “I want to marry Sandy,” she said simply.

Perry drew a few chuckles when Olson tossed a question about whether she could envision changing so that she’d be able to have a relationship with men (plaintiff lawyers have been asking that question throughout the day, a clear attempt to rebut the argument of gay marriage foes that being gay is a choice, not part of their natural makeup). “I’m 45 years old,” she said of changing her sexual preferences. “I don’t think so.”

Perry also walked the judge through her long effort to marry Stier, dating back to 2003, when she proposed in the Berkeley hills. She testified how they were one of the couples to marry at San Francisco City Hall in 2004, getting a license that was later invalidated by the courts. When she lost the right to marry through Proposition 8, her reaction was: “I’m not good enough to marry.”

1:55 p.m.: Defense cross-examines one of the plaintiffs
The afternoon session in the Proposition 8 trial is under way with Katami taking the stand under questioning from Brian Raum, lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, one of the conservative groups aligned against gay marriage. Looks like the gloves will now come off.

Raum started by playing a video from the Proposition 8 campaign featuring a Massachusetts heterosexual couple decrying how their second-grader was exposed to teachings about homosexuality at school. Raum is asking Katami about whether he believes it is acceptable for sexuality and homosexuality to be taught to first- and second-graders; Katami is taking a measured approach, pointing out that without children, it is hard to fully evaluate what is appropriate to teach young children about such issues at certain ages.

“For me, Proposition 8 had nothing to do with children,” Katami replied under cross-examination. “It was a diversion “… a tactic which does not sit at the core of the issue.”