The Brief

Election night 15 years ago — Nov. 4, 2008 — LGBTQ+ voters in California experienced a kind of political whiplash: euphoria and despair in one night as the states' voters overwhelmingly chose to elect Barack Obama president, while simultaneously taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Proposition 8 — eliminating a right to marriage that had been granted to gay and lesbian couples by the California Supreme Court less than six months earlier — passed with 52% of the vote.

Two years later, on Jan. 11, 2010, two same-sex couples, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Jeffrey Zarrillo and Paul Katami, had their day in federal court when they sued to overturn Prop. 8 after they were denied marriage licenses.

That trial, which included expert witnesses testifying under oath about anti-gay tropes, theories and political arguments, resulted in the measure being struck down. The federal judge presiding over that two-week trial deemed the case for banning same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, a violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court essentially upheld the lower court ruling in a 5-4 decision, June 26, 2013, by declining to take up the appeal.

For more than a decade after it ended, videotapes of the trial were kept under seal, until KQED successfully fought a long legal battle that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court allowing them to be unsealed.

After the videotapes were released, KQED invited the four Prop. 8 plaintiffs — Kris Perry and Sandy Stier along with Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo — to view them for the first time and talk about the trial, its aftermath, and its significance today.

Those videos can be viewed here and here. (Or watch them below)

Reflecting on the trial, its aftermath, and its significance now

One thing that stood out is the "Yes on 8" messages such as "Protect the Children," with television commercials saying unless the measure passed children would be encouraged to marry someone of their same gender.

Those messages still echo today in political rhetoric and legislation related to high school sports and the use of bathrooms by transgender youth.

The campaign to ban same-sex marriages in California was promoted by leaders in the Catholic and Mormon Churches.

"The sad part of it is, that campaign worked because the convenience of the lie won people over, and the lie was based on fear," recalls Paul Katami. "And that fear included children. So I would never say it was a brilliant tactic, but it was an evil tactic."

That tactic using the guise of protecting children from harm brought by LGBTQ people is still at work today by politicians and ultraconservative groups like Moms for Liberty, who talk about parental rights to push back against policies that support transgender youth and their families.

Attorney Thomas R. Burke led KQED's successful legal battle to unseal the tapes.

He says the trial tested the homophobic, hateful arguments promoted by opponents of LGBTQ+ rights. The witnesses, the withering cross-examinations, and the poignant testimony is all caught on video that is now available to anyone who wants to watch.

"The evidence didn't support you," Burke says, referring to "Yes on 8" defenders. "You had great lawyers arguing your cause and you didn't win. And if people thought you should have won, they can see and judge for themselves. If you didn't have that recorded, that couldn't happen."

The historic trial resulted in a landmark decision on Aug. 2, 2010 when Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down the ballot measure — but it was hardly a foregone conclusion at the start.

"I remember feeling very anxious and scared, honestly, not knowing how any of it would turn out," lead plaintiff Kris Perry, now 59, says after viewing trial clips at KQED. "People were really, you know, counting on us to deliver. And there was a lot of pressure."

Perry's wife, Sandy Stier, 61, recalls what seemed like days and days of preparation before going on the stand. She remembers worrying about how the trial might affect their lives, "not only for me, what it might be like for my kids, for my parents, my siblings and my community. And so it was very, very anxious going into court that day, not knowing."

Zarrillo and Katami were the first witnesses called to testify.

"I had so many fears going into the trial," Katami says. "I was not confident because this was uncharted territory for both of us as human beings."

"I said to Paul at one point, 'Even if we lose, we can go to our graves knowing that we didn't stand for being treated as second class citizens,' " Zarrillo recalls. "We tried to do something about it."

Jeff Zarrillo (left) and Paul Katami, plaintiffs in the landmark 2010 lawsuit that overturned California's ban on same-sex marriage, sit during an interview at the KQED offices in San Francisco on March 3.

(

Kori Suzuki

/

Kori Suzuki / KQED News

)

Trial makes people aware of rights denied

The trial was originally going to be televised on closed circuit TV via YouTube until Prop. 8 attorneys objected and the U.S. Supreme Court intervened to prevent it. But Judge Walker recorded the trial anyway, he said, for his personal use in writing the decision.

On the stand, Katami was asked by one of the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs, David Boies, what the big deal was about not being able to marry when they had the option of domestic partnership.

"The big deal is it's creating a separate category for us. And that's a major deal because it makes you into a second, third ... and fourth class citizen," Katami said that day in January 2010.

Reflecting on his testimony Katami, says until the Prop. 8 trial, many heterosexuals didn't know the hundreds of rights automatically afforded straight couples — but denied to LGBTQ people. For example, some rights are not automatically afforded same sex couples, like social security benefits of a partner who dies.

"And if you don't have that protection because marriage allows that protection, there's a bright spotlight that shines down on those rights when you don't have them," Katami says.

Viewing the trial tapes, Zarrillo notes that, "When you're on the stand like that, you have to really figure out, 'how do I answer this question [in a way] that is not going to hurt our cause?' " he says.

When Perry was asked in court to describe her relationship with Stier, whom she met while both were students at U.C. Santa Cruz, Perry testified that, "I met Sandy thinking she was maybe the sparkliest person I ever met. And I wanted to be her friend."

On the stand, Stier testified that after meeting Perry she "really felt like the thunderbolt of change for me." Unlike Perry, Stier wasn't an out lesbian at the time.

"I had moved to California, got married to a man, had two kids, and knew that something wasn't working for me," Stier tells KQED.

The trial tapes reveal the humanity of the issue, ably presented by the four plaintiffs, said Judge Walker recently.

"Both of the couples were very able witnesses — very attractive witnesses. ... So we're talking about matters that are intensely personal and important to them. That's pretty compelling testimony under any circumstances," Walker told KQED.

But the audible and visible emotion of their testimony was out of view, until the trial tapes were unsealed.

Of course, unlike TV shows, where every courtroom scene is riveting and entertaining, real-life trials are mostly "hours and hours of tedium broken episodically by sometimes emotions (or) events of great interest. But they are few and far between," Walker said.

Paul Katami (center left), a plaintiff in the landmark 2010 lawsuit that overturned California's ban on same-sex marriage, greets fellow plaintiffs Kris Perry (center right) Sandy Stier (right),and KQED Politics Editor Scott Shafer (left) ahead of an interview at the KQED offices in San Francisco on March 3.

(

Kori Suzuki

/

Kori Suzuki / KQED News

)

Tapes show how courts deal with social issues

Still, the retired judge said the tapes will be useful in law schools to show students how courts deal with" a social issue or a constitutional issue of widespread importance."

After Prop. 8 was struck down in 2010 both couples soon married and remain so today. But LGBTQ people are still under attack by people hoping to use them as political fodder on behalf of conservative causes.

"I think that is incredibly dangerous," says transgender activist Honey Mahogany. "These are tropes that have always been a part of emotionally manipulating people to advantage a certain political group or cause, right? They're not based in fact."

Mahogany, who also chairs the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee, says release of the trial tapes helps to humanize issues and the plaintiffs.

"Seeing what happened during the trial behind the scenes is really important because it helps expose the truth," Mahogany says. "It helps expose the fact that this is just about two people loving each other, wanting to cement their relationship, wanting to protect each other ... and their children."

Mahogany says given the risks of failure, what the Prop. 8 plaintiffs did was "incredibly important and brave."

She hopes their example will embolden others to come forward today to humanize LGBTQ issues. "We can learn from history. We can, you know, find our champions and also our storytellers to help us tell our stories," Mahogany says.

With the videotapes now accessible online, the couples' stories told under oath can be seen by anyone who wishes to watch.

"They fought for a decade that this would not be seen," says attorney Burke. "And I think there's a reason for that," Burke adds, implying their arguments simply didn't hold up under legal scrutiny.

Although Walker's ruling striking down Proposition 8 was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the wording of the Prop. 8 constitutional amendment remains in the California Constitution. But voters will have the chance to change that next November.

The State Legislature placed a measure on the fall 2024 ballot that removes that now-unenforceable language of Prop. 8 and replaces it with the statement that "marriage is a fundamental right" for all couples and is among " the inalienable rights to enjoy life and liberty and to pursue and obtain safety, happiness, and privacy."

It's an affirmation of the right of all couples to marry in California.

Hundreds of organizations are rallying at MacArthur Park on Friday in one of many events recognizing May Day, which is expected to draw thousands of people. 

The rally began at 10 a.m. with speakers, and then the event will march to City Hall around noon. Westlake is no stranger to International Workers’ Day, said Victor Narro, project director with the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, which sits across the street from MacArthur Park.

“We’re dealing with so much this year, and I think May Day is going to be a chance for us to come together,” Narro told The LA Local ahead of the rally. 

Advocacy groups from different backgrounds, like immigrants’ rights, housing, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice, will unite for the cause of workers’ rights, Narro said.

“It’s really an inclusive march,” he said. “This really is unlike any other march.”

Organizers also hope to make the event safe for undocumented immigrants and emphasize that they are taking security seriously.

“You just don’t know with this administration,” he added. 

Organizers are calling for a boycott and will rally under the banner, “Solo El Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping” with the march ending at Gloria Molina Grand Park at the foot of City Hall. 

This year’s May Day also marks the 20th anniversary of La Gran Marcha, when millions of people took to the streets around the country to protest proposed legislation that would have included making it a felony offense to be an undocumented immigrant.

The event is still fresh in a lot of people’s minds, including Juan Aguilar, a supermarket worker who came to the United States in 1989 and participated in the 2006 march in downtown L.A.

“I was really impressed by the number of people there. And I didn’t feel afraid. People weren’t afraid,” he said at a sign-making event for this year’s May Day rally at the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Koreatown. 

He feels it’s so much different now. Back then, Aguilar said, people were only afraid near the border.

“Once you were inside the country, you could move freely. Now it’s everywhere,” he said. “People are afraid because raids can happen at any moment. At work, on the street, leaving court, anywhere.”

The fear in the community has prompted Aguilar to participate in this year’s rally.

Friday will also be Jay Lee’s first time participating in the May Day rally and march. He pointed to the role labor movements have played in shaping migration and identity within Korean communities.

“Korea’s got this huge history of labor,” Lee said. “The existence of the Korean diaspora here is inherently tied to the labor movement in Korea.”

For Lee, a Korean American, this year’s May Day is especially significant. It marks the first year South Korea has designated May 1 as a mandatory public holiday for all workers, including those in the public sector. Previously, only private-sector workers had the day off.

He said this year’s march is also about solidarity across communities.

“We’re going to be marching with Black workers, the Latino centers, the Filipino centers,” Lee said. “We’re going to be all marching together as one voice, and I think that’s really cool.”

The LA Local has reporters on the ground. Check back for updates, and see more photos and video on our Instagram.

The two chicks growing in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest have been named.

The offspring of famous parents Jackie and Shadow will be called Sandy and Luna, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest and is working to preserve acres of land in the area.

The organization announced the results of this year’s chick naming contest Friday after inviting the eagles’ fanbase to submit suggestions with a donation last month.

Keeping with tradition, the final votes were left up to Big Bear Valley third-grade students. A list of names was selected randomly from the nearly 64,000 public fundraiser submissions and delivered on ballots to the students, who are studying bald eagles in school, earlier this week.

Sandy was the most popular name entered into the contest with more than 3,700 submissions, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The name is an homage to Sandy Steers, an environmental advocate who helped launch the eagle livestream and the nonprofit’s late executive director. She died in February, a few weeks before the pair of eggs were laid.

“Please know that although Sandy would not have wanted us to outright name one of the eaglets Sandy, she would have been honored that you and the students went through the process and named one of the 2026 eaglets after her,” the organization wrote on Facebook Friday to its more than 1.2 million followers.

Chick naming traditions

Sandy and Luna have been known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, respectively, since they hatched in early April.

Once the eaglets arrived, Friends of Big Bear Valley was swarmed with hundreds of requests to name one of the chicks “Sandy.”

But it’s a right of passage for the Big Bear third graders to name the chicks, and the tradition was “one of Sandy’s greatest joys,” according to Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s media manager.

Jackie and Shadow, the adult birds whose parenting saga each nesting season has captured human attention around the world, have had previous chicks named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba, Spirit and Cookie through a similar process.

“Last year, because Jackie and Shadow did not have chicks the previous two seasons, she opened it up to the other grades that didn’t get to participate when they were in the third grade,” Voisard said in a statement. “That was Sandy. Education was extremely important to her.”

Last season’s eaglets were dubbed Sunny and Gizmo by the Big Bear elementary students, who voted on 30 finalists pulled from about 54,000 name choices crowdsourced in a week-long fundraiser.

What’s next for Sandy and Luna

The nonprofit asked people to submit gender neutral names because the sex of each eaglet is not yet known.

Sandy and Luna are nearly 4 weeks old as of Friday, but once the eaglets reach around 9 to 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help Friends of Big Bear Valley make an educated guess.

One of Jackie and Shadow's chicks peaks out from behind its parent on April 5.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

Big Bear's famous bald eaglets on April 7.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

The chicks in the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake on April 12.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

Sandy and Luna, formally known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, stretching in the nest on April 30.

(

Friends of Big Bear Valley

/

YouTube

)

Some of the signs the nonprofit looks out for include the chick’s size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The only definitive way to know the eaglets’ sex is through a blood test, which nonprofit officials have said is unlikely. There is no human intervention in the nest during nesting season, according to Voisard.

When the eaglets are around 10 to 14 weeks old, they could fledge, or take their first flight away from the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

But as the nonprofit often reminds fans, nature is in charge of the timeline — a previous eaglet named Simba took 16 weeks to fledge.

Fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far north as British Columbia, as far east as Yellowstone and as far south as Baja California, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Big picture progress

Friends of Big Bear Valley is continuing to lead a $10 million fundraiser to buy more than 62-acres near the nest to preserve it from a planned housing project called Moon Camp.

Instead, the organization and the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust want the land to be placed under a permanent conservatorship.

Officials say “Save Moon Camp” is the most ambitious fundraising effort in the history of Friends of Big Bear Valley. It’s raised more than $2.3 million as of Friday.

California’s billionaires are not the only ones fighting back against the state’s largest health workers union this election season. Now the clinics are too.

The California Primary Care Association, which represents more than 2,300 community health clinics, and Open Door Community Health Centers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West from placing an initiative on the November ballot that would dictate how clinics spend money.

The clinic measure is less prominent than the billionaire-backed fight against a wealth tax, but recently came closer to appearing before voters.

The clinic’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the union’s ballot measure would interfere with federal laws and regulations that place strict spending requirements on nonprofit health clinics that serve low-income patients.

Joey Cachuela, general counsel for the clinic association said in a statement the initiative threatens patient care. “We are filing this preelection challenge and need the courts to act to prevent this drastic measure from ever going to the ballot. Patient lives are at risk,” Cachuela said.

A spokesperson for the healthcare workers union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Elizabeth Sophy, far right, who is a part of Father Joe’s Villages Street Health Team, examines Devlin Chambers at an encampment in downtown San Diego on March 22, 2024. Chambers, 60, said he has a pinched nerve in his back.

(

Kristian Carreon

/

CalMatters

)

Earlier this month, union members turned in more than 1 million signatures to qualify the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act” for the ballot. The union collected nearly double the number of signatures required to place the proposal before voters.

Under California’s election rules, proposals that gather enough signatures qualify for the ballot after the Secretary of State’s office verifies their validity.

The union proposal would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90% of revenue on services that fulfill the stated mission to “provide primary and preventive care to low-income and underserved populations.” It would also punish clinics that do not adhere to this spending formula and place the money in a state-operated account that could later be used for worker training and staffing programs.

“It is the intent of this initiative to create a reasonable minimum standard of mission-directed

spending … to ensure clinic patient service delivery and workforce stability is prioritized over management and overhead spending,” the initiative states.

Union leaders and members argue that clinics spend too much money on executive pay and administrative overhead and too little on patients. They also contend that some clinics spend only half of their revenue on direct patient care, an allegation that clinics call misleading.

“We have one message for our clinics: Put patients first. It’s time for an end to wasteful spending. It’s time to make sure clinics are putting their money in patient care and not CEO-pay,” said Brisa Barrera, a medical assistant from Santa Rosa Community Health during an April rally to celebrate delivering the signatures.

The clinic association, however, argues that the initiative would illegally force hundreds of community health centers to close by stripping nearly $2 billion from health systems.

Tory Starr, chief executive of Open Door Community Health Centers, which operates clinics in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, said the measure would be “devastating” to the organization’s rural patients and would result in layoffs, reduced services and closures.

A nearly identical version of the ballot initiative failed to pass in the state Legislature earlier this year.

The initiative is one of three measures the union has submitted to the ballot. Another aims to limit health care executive pay at $450,000, and SEIU-UHW is also backing the “billionaire’s tax” that has drawn ire from both Democrats and Republicans.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.