This is the story of Richard, a middle-aged California man who, like most Californians, is not directly affected by Proposition 8.
Richard grew up in El Paso, and made his way to California, where he went from being a nobody to a nationally-famous person in the mid-1980s. He became inexplicably popular, and a woman named Doreen (a woman, mind you, not a man) started a long-distance relationship with him.
Richard and Doreen could not be together, and corresponded over the next several years. Three years later, Richard proposed to Doreen, but circumstances forced them to postpone their Proposition 8-approved heterosexual marriage for another eight years.
In Marin County, California, on October 3, 1996, Richard and Doreen were married.
You might wonder what the catch is here, or as Paul Harvey would say, "The....rest of the story." It's over the jump.
Richard is infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez, found guilty of 14 murders committed in California in 1984 and 1985, and sentenced to death in 1988.
However, the voters of California, prompted by millions of dollars of out-of-state religious money, have decided that a man deemed (and rightly so, IMHO) not fit to live by the state of California is fit to marry a person of the opposite sex, while law-abiding citizens are prohibited from marrying a person of the same sex.
If you claim to "protect heterosexual marriage" by voting for Proposition 8, you're valuing the opposite-sex marriages of heinous criminals over those of law-abiding same-sex couples.
Protect heterosexual marriage - marry a death row prisoner! There are hundreds of them in California, and if you can't find one, a lifer will do quite nicely.