So, the cynic in me worries that he’s playing both sides here. No matter who wins, he has the ability to say that he tried–”see, I said it wasn’t a revision!” and “see, I said it should be overturned.”

Dear Editor:

Ken Starr, Dean of Law at Pepperdine University, and staunch defender of Prop. 8, has filed a lawsuit to invalidate the legal marriages of gay and lesbian citizens. The ironies of Prop. 8 abound, not the least of which is an attack on the 18,000 marriages of committed, loving couples– mine included– in the name of somehow protecting someone else’s marriage.

It reminds me of Gen. Westmoreland’s claim that he destroyed a Vietnamese village in order to save it. Lucky villagers! Saved! Like them, I don’t feel saved, just attacked.

But it doesn’t stop there. Mr. Starr must surely know that using Prop. 8 to invalidate those legal marriages makes it an ex post facto law, something expressly forbidden by Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution. But then, Mr. Starr also thinks that the State should prefer and enforce the beliefs of religious conservatives regarding homosexuality over those of others, both religious and not, who don’t share them. In his view, these beliefs, and not equality before the law, should determine the availability of the civil contract known as marriage to people those denominations consider especial sinners.

Perhaps Pepperdine should look at the quality of its School of Law, because these are the same people who were falsely claiming that my civil marriage is a threat to their freedoms of religion and speech. As any high school student could tell them, those two rights are also guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and are absolutely inviolate.

Kudos to Jerry Brown for having the courage to stand up and say that liberty, freedom of religion, and equality of all citizens before the law, are the values the State of California must defend, not the narrow religious and social agendas of a bare majority of the voters.