Thursday, January 21, was a day many people in the gay community had been waiting for — William Tam, a leading voice of the Proposition 8 campaign, received a grilling at the Proposition 8 trial from attorney David Boies, who's made a solid gold reputation as an intelligent and relentless interrogator.

Tam took the stand yesterday after lunch recess, with Boies carefully making the connection between Tam and the pro-Prop. 8 campaign, according to San Jose Mercury News reporter Howard Mintz.

“Tam's testimony,” Mintz writes, “is a key

ingredient in the plaintiffs' effort to show that hostility and animus

toward gays and lesbians fueled the passage of Proposition 8.“

Within a few minutes, Boies was adeptly making that case.

Boies had Tam admitting that he supported the wildly

incorrect beliefs that gays are a bunch of pedophiles, that gays

run the city of San Francisco, and that gay marriage would lead to “moral decay.”

“I believe if the term

marriage can be used beyond one man, one woman, then any two persons of

any age, of any relationship, can use the same argument to come and ask

for the term marriage,” Tam told Boies. “That would lead to incest. That would lead to

polygamy. If this is a civil right, what would prevent other groups

form asking for the same right.”

Sounds a bit hostile to us.

On Friday, Prop. 8 plaintiffs' attorneys, who want to overturn California's gay marriage ban, may wrap up its case with testimony from its last witness, University of California-Davis professor Greg Herek.

Herek's a psychology professor who will talk about mental health

research on gays and lesbians and the impact of denying marriage to that community.

Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.

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