Pol: Anti-Gay Marriage Stance 'Grounded in Prejudice'

The mayor of San Diego today told the judge hearing the case against California’s gay-marriage ban that he’d changed his stance on the issue because he came to see that “the decisions I made were grounded in prejudice.” Jerry Sanders says becoming a supporter of the nuptials cost him the votes of many fellow Republicans, but in talking with gays and lesbians, including his own daughter, “I was shocked at the depth of (their) hurt.”

Opponents of Proposition 8, passed by voters in 2008, are trying to show that bigotry is behind the measure—which would make it unconstitutional, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. “I don’t think that makes them a bigot,” Sanders told a defense lawyer of people who voted for the ban, “but I believe they were saying an entire class of people doesn’t deserve the same treatment in their relationships.”
(More Jerry Sanders stories.)