My female partner and I have been together for almost 28 years. We raised the three children I adopted, but we are neither "domestic partners" nor do we plan on getting married any time soon. I am also the only openly gay member of the city council for the California's fifth largest city, Long Beach, and I authored a resolution which expresses the full city council's opposition to Proposition 8, a ballot measure that would prohibit same-sex couples from marrying in the state of California.

So how do I reconcile these obvious contradictions? Perfectly. Because as an American I know that we take pride in having freed ourselves from a church state and intrusive government more than 200 years ago. The founders of the United States struggled mightily with the question of whether "freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws" and concluded, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1808: "State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights."

That the voters of California are only days away from possibly altering our state constitution to prohibit anyone but a man and a woman from marrying, thereby forcing a religious view into secular law, should strike observers as odd and un-American. Proposition 8 is on the California ballot because the California supreme court recently overturned a 2000 state initiative that used the very language being proposed to be inserted in the constitution this November 4. The proposition and prior initiative state in deceptively simple language: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognised in California." In May 2008, the California supreme court struck down that language and ruled that the right to marry is a constitutional one and "has been recognised as one of the basic, inalienable civil rights guaranteed to an individual by the California constitution. … We conclude that, under this state's constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual's liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process."

The court's ruling made it clear that under the current California constitution, marriage could not be restricted to a union only between a man and a woman, which is the very reason proponents of Proposition 8 are now attempting to eliminate the "inalienable civil rights" of individuals to marry whom they choose to marry by altering the state constitution.

The supporters of Proposition 8 are in fact waging a vigorous campaign with the assistance (financial and otherwise) of religious organisations and are providing materials for church bulletins to remind their members that Proposition 8 "restores the definition of marriage. God himself is the author of marriage. Its meaning is written in the very nature of man and woman as they come from the hand of the Creator."

These supporters also warn that without the passage of Proposition 8 "Californians will be forced to not just be tolerant of gay lifestyles, but face mandatory compliance regardless of their personal beliefs." The only problem is that Proposition 8 would actually do just that – force mandatory compliance of a religious belief "regardless of personal beliefs". Proposition 8 proponents note (and I have to admit that I had agreed) that California has provided same-sex couples with the right to enter into "domestic partnerships" for several years – affording them with most of the same rights as are conferred with "marriage" and there was no need to extend the right to marriage to same-sex couples. However, the California supreme court's ruling also addressed this issue and found that by assigning "a different name for the official family relationship of same-sex couples as contrasted with the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples raises constitutional concerns not only under the state constitutional right to marry, but also under the state constitutional equal protection clause". Finally, the court found no "compelling state interest" in maintaining the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in as much "permitting same-sex couples access to the designation of marriage will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage, because same-sex couples who choose to marry will be subject to the same obligations and duties that currently are imposed on married opposite-sex couples". As an attorney I found these legal arguments persuasive. I just recently authored a book about the women who worked on the home front during the second world war so that this nation could defeat brutal dictators who viewed homosexuals, Jews and others as less than human.

For all these reasons, I cannot imagine anything so un-American as the taking away of "inalienable civil rights" and altering what constitutes "equal protection" in a state constitution on the basis of religious belief. That's why I am opposing Proposition 8.