 Your honor, the plaintiffs are in the same position as Milgrit Jeter and Richard Loving, who in 1967 had no interest in diluting the institution of marriage. They only wanted to marry the person they loved, the person of their choice, who happened to be a person of a different race. That's all the plaintiffs desire, the right to marry the person they love, the person of their choice, who happens to be of the same sex. Well, now the Supreme Court decided that the issue which we are confronted with here was not right for the Supreme Court to weigh in on. That was 1972. What's happened in the 38 years since 1972? The Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas reversed Bowers v. Hardwick with a six-to-three decision, and the majority of that opinion, Justice Kennedy and four other justices, decided that case on the basis of due process. The statute in Lawrence was a criminal statute. Yes. The denial of the right to marriage of same-sex couples doesn't have any criminal sanction. I submit it doesn't make any difference. Our fundamental rights cannot be taken away unless the state has a very, very fundamental, strong, compelling reason to do so, and it acts with surgical precision so that it takes no more than the compelling reason justifies. We are talking about a group of individuals who meet every one of the standards for suspect classification. They are a minority. There wasn't any dispute about that. It's an immutable characteristic. The witnesses said that. I'm willing to acknowledge that there are plenty of good Californians that voted for Proposition 8 because they are not, well, let's say they are uncomfortable with gay people. They're uncomfortable with gay people entering into marriage, and they're uncomfortable with the very idea that gay people are just like us. But they didn't hear, and too bad they couldn't have seen the evidence in this trial. The Supreme Court has said that marriage is the most important relation in life. It is the foundation of society. It is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. It is a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights and older than all of our political parties, a right of intimacy to the degree of being sacred. There are 14 Supreme Court decisions that talk about the right of marriage and the testimony of all these expert witnesses and the testimony of the plaintiffs. That erects an insurmountable barrier to the proponents of this proposition. It will not hurt Californians. It will benefit Californians. But as long as it doesn't hurt Californians to get rid of a handful, or let's say a harmful stigma in their Constitution that's labeling people into classes, then it's unconstitutional. Thank you, Your Honor. Very well. Thank you, Mr. Olson. So how does preventing same-sex couples from getting married advance the interest of procreation? What one single bit of evidence is there that they are a threat to the channeling function? If you accept that California has the right in the first place, and I do not, I believe, Your Honor, that there is a political tide turning. I think that people's eyes are being opened. Finally, people are becoming more understanding and tolerant. The polls tell us that. There isn't any secret in that, but that does not justify a judge in a court to say, I really need the polls to be just a few inches higher. I need someone to go out and take the temperature of the American public before I can break this barrier and break down this discrimination. Because if they change it here in the next election in California, we still have Utah, we still have Missouri, and we still have Montana. This case is going to go to a court. Some judge is going to have to decide what we've asked you to decide, and you have to have a reason, Your Honor, and you have to have a reason that's real, not speculation, not build on stereotypes, and not hypothetical. That's what the Supreme Court decision tells us. And I submit, at the end of the day, I don't know, and I don't have to put on any evidence, with all due respect to Mr. Cooper, does not cut it. It does not cut it when you're taking away the constitutional rights, basic human rights, and human dignity from a large group of individuals. You cannot say after the fact we are going to take away the constitutional right to liberty, privacy, association, and sexual intimacy that we already tell you you have. That is not acceptable. And it's not acceptable under our Constitution, and Mr. Blankenhorn is absolutely right. The day we end that, we will be more American. Thank you. So there's nothing further, Mr. Cooper.