Another day is done in the Proposition 8 trial. Kenneth Miller, a Claremont McKenna professor and the Proposition 8 team’s first witness, remains on the stand, under cross-examination by plaintiffs attorney David Boies. As the afternoon progressed, Boies moved on to sparring with Miller about the professor’s view of whether Proposition 8 and other same-sex marriage bans amount to discrimination. The lawyer and witness went around and around on the topic, with Miller only conceding that it just defines marriage as between a man and a woman and “excludes other forms of marriage.” He also at one point said “it creates a distinction between the two groups.”

Miller was called to the stand to testify that gays and lesbians are becoming a more potent political force, trying to undercut last week’s testimony from a Stanford University professor who took the exact opposite view. The importance, of course, is that one of the plaintiffs legal arguments is that gays and lesbians are vulnerable to political backlash and need greater legal protections as a minority group that confronts discrimination.

Miller will be back on the stand Tuesday morning. The next Proposition 8 witness is an expert who is expected to testify on the importance of procreation to marriage, a key argument to defenders of the gay marriage ban.

Read the rest of Howard Mintz’s San Jose Mercury article here.