the nation's military leaders give more details of the plan to take on isil. s are president obama pledges millions of dollars and thousands of people to deal with the ow ebola outbreak in africa. a big nascar star tony stewart facing a grand jury after the crash of a fellow driver. that and more coming up at 6:00. >> somebody said what's the difference between gay marriage and straight marriage? difference? >> in 2008, voters in california approved proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. two couples challenged the law in a case that went to the u.s. supreme court. spear.

>> you believe you are a second class citizen from the moment you recognize that you are gay or lebsian and until recently, you didn't think you ever would be equal. >> the other couple involved in the federal case, geoff zirillo and paul katamy. >> there are rights that come along with marriage as well. the nine justices declined to rule on proposition 8, thereby upholding a lower court's decision that the ban was unconstitutional. you spoke to the proposition eight challengers in washington d.c.

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this week, our guests are the two couples who successfully challenge the california's ban on same-sex marriage. before the break, you heard from the two men. >> now, my interview with chris perry and sandy steer. >> right after the texas sodomy case, ti"time magazine" came ou with two versions of their cover showing two very squared away, bushy looking gay couples and gay women. the headline was: is marriage next?" and i thought, wow. i hadn't even thought about it. had you been thinking about it, chris? >> no. actually, i think marriage equality seemed like a much more recent phenomenon although, of course, it's not. the lawrence case is an example

of sort of the worst kind of lgbt discrimination where someone is criminalized for their behavior or who they are . instead of that which i think we are so fortunate to have that over with, we have moved to a time when we are talking about something as positive as b >> but i remember just before "lawrence" talking to activists, people involved with hrc empty the legal landscape and people said marriage not on our radar screen. let's talk about equality first. was the possibility of marriage marriage? >> it's all about having the same options of everybody else. it isn't even whether or not you ever exercise that option. to be told by your government: you don't even get to choose is so harmful. you grow up believing you are a second class citizen from the moment you recognize that you

are gay or lesbian and until recently, you didn't think you ever would be equal. marriage is the most significant decision you make as an adult. and if the government's telling you, sorry, when you decide to be with someone of the same sex, you don't get to be married. you will never be as good as everyone else, you are forever in the status of a child essentially in this child. benefits of all kinds are delivered to couples, individuals through marriage. if that weren't the case, then we could say something like, well, we want to reject that paradigm and go with a different one because it had so many bad -- there were so many bad chapters in history for women and other people with marriage, but when you look at what the institution does today, it delivers more than a thousand benefits to couples. if you tell the whole group of americans who pay taxes and do everything else they don't get to have those benefits, it is a powerful negative message and

and i would say that with chris and i, we got married because we

fell in love. and we want to have a family together like anybody else who gets married. it's just the same thing. >> well, we are all similar age so we can remember the express: it. you had to really think about what it would mean to make a federal case out of it. >> the scrutiny is intention. it's completely 100% worth it. i try and explain over and over again the difference between using the court system to resolve a problem between -- or the ballot box. the ballot box wasn't working for gays in this country only a few years ago. we are a minority. we are a significant minority. we will never be the majority. so ballot box measures on our rights, our civil rights, will never go well and so we were left with really settle for what the majority wants or challenge our state's laws that ban us from getting married. and when you look at this way

and you realiwhat harm it's cau you, your family, your it kids and everyone else, it's not that difficult of a choice anymore. you start to feel likely if i problem. >> sandy, no hesitation? >> not to get involved in the case certainly not and we felt strongly that after proposition 8 passed, it was terrible for california but it sent such a negative message to the children in our state that the they couldn't count on -- they couldn't count on the government to protect them if they are growing up gay in our state and in terms of our own involvement, we felt like we were at a good place in our lives to commit stoto something like that because we had solid stable careers, stable family life. our children were growing up. i never once wished we hadn't done it, but it was certainly a major investment, far more than we anticipated but i would echo what chris said. it was very much worth it because we just never took our eye off of the prize and the california.

>> would you recommend to people you just meet to be petitioners in a major precedent-setting national case? sounds like a great idea. >> if you feel deeply passionate about an issue and you can see no other path forward, i think it's a great option to exercise and again, you know, i have said i have never been a terribly patriotic person because i felt discriminated against my buyer life and it wasn't until we took prop 8 to federal court and i stood in that courthouse, i took an oath and gave testimony under the american flag that i felt like an american for the first time because it was the first time i felt like i was able to express a grievance in a place that was established to resolve them and that i was getting the same access to that institution for that problem as anybody else and i have felt so excluded from other institutions.

i never wanted to be in the military but if i had, i wouldn't have been able to be myself. i felt excluded from marriage. in so many places, i felt i shouldn't try to work there? >> does it operate when you hear kris talk about a whole lifetime of associations, of assumptions that she would be excluded, barred, treated differently? is it different for someone who comes out later in life? >> i think my experience is quite different. i did come out later, but coming out later causes a great deal of disappointment in a lot of people that you are close to because they have known you as differently and so i think i experienced the -- some of the rejection and the emotional trauma hater in life. i was an adult so it's quite different. to me, that's the most important thing possible is that the work that we do sets that stage that some day, somebody gets to take it for granted. >> roughly half of the population has marriage equality

and it just seems like it happened in a flash, but people are still changing their minds. there are people who are wamping this now on television who are very unhappy about the fact that you could get married. so yes, mission accomplished for you guys. you can go and do your thing but half of the country wondering about it, unsure about it, unsure where it all leads. there is still amou lot of batt to be fought. sloolt true en though more people support marriage equality, not everyone does port marriage equality. not everyone ever will. we have a constitution to protect the people from the people. >> that's what this country was founded on. >> the l i know this sandy and i want to do is upset or disrupt anybody else ever. we would never expect other people would stand up and be supportive. we just hope we don't disrupt or upset them. >> said, it is important to come out. harvey milk said it 30 years ago

and was assassinated for being out. i think his legacy is very powerful in the sense that because he was out, he paid a huge price and i feel a burden and a responsibility to do that in my life. >> when the we come back, we will hear from the two couples about the future of marriage, theirs and everyone's.

just real reporting. the new al jazeera america mobile app, available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now this week on the show, the plaintiffs who challenged proposition 8, here is a final thought from each of the couples. >> it's interesting to have a group in society that really,

really wants to get married. instead of destroying marriage, as people have predicted, could gay people be reviving it because they want it so bad? >> when you want something so hard, like paul said, when you fight for something so hard like marriage, we want to bring, hopefully, some security and stability to that. >> i don't know if that's necessarily our responsibility. i think our responsibility is to find the person that we love and to commit to that person and, hopefully, be part of an institution that can bring some type of pride to our community as well. >> you are embarking on something that already is in a lot of trouble in the case of marriage, a social institution that has been buffeted and under heavy wind for a while. is it being changed by you? >> i think we make big changes

in this country when we know it's time. we de segregated schools. we have the loving case, many instances of bringing people together and bringing the country together because the laws that kept us apart were too negative and too hard on people. it's hard to go through change. sandy and i are patient. we don't expect everybody to be where we are right now. but we do hope people can at least embrace that fairness and equality are fundamental principles and we are exercising our right to belong and not to be better than, not to be less than but to belong. it's also something that struck me as incredibly wonderful when we learned long after the trial was over, long after sandy and i had been married that chuck cooper, the lead counsel for the other side saw us get married on television. he couldn't -- the quote that i read was that he couldn't help but rejoice in our happiness and this is the person who brought the case all the way to the

supreme court and argued in front of nine justices that we shouldn't be married. when he saw us get married, he couldn't help but rejoice in our happiness and that, i take, is a very powerful and important sign of progress because nobody led the effort more than mr. cooper, and nobody understood better when it was over why sandy and i wanted to be married. >> i am thomas drayton. >> this is al jazeera america. live in new york city, i'm tony harris. there is a chance that troops will be put on the ground to fight isil. >> this is a global threat that demands a global response. >> president obama calls