m michael milano, and finally way down at the far end of the table is chad griffin. he is the managing partner of a strategic communications and strategy firm, but also the board president of the american foundation of equal rights, which has been the sponsor of the legal challenge to overturn proposition 8. as we do every week, we will ask the panel was questions first, and then at about 2:30 we will open it up to your discussion. with that, the first question is yours. >> this is more for chad. as someone relatively well informed on the issue, now that proposition 8 has reached the courts, could you give us a quick update on where everything stands? >> next month is the two-year mark from when we filed the case. we had a trial a few months after that that lasted about three weeks. this past august, august 4, we got a historic, sweeping victory in federal court that proposition 8 is in fact unconstitutional. that led to an appeal by the opponents in our case, and a few months ago we had a hearing before the ninth circuit court of appeals, and before the ninth circui