The trial over California’s ban on same-sex marriage opened today with a gay man’s plea to be treated like anyone else who wants to wed his sweetheart.

“I’m proud to be gay. … I love Jeff more than myself,” Paul Katami, 37, of Burbank testified in a packed San Francisco federal courtroom. “Being gay doesn’t make me any less of an American.”

But with the November 2008 passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, “being gay means I’m unequal,” Katami said.

Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, 36, his partner of nearly nine years, are one of two couples suing to overturn Prop. 8, claiming that it violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender. The nonjury trial before Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is the first in any federal court over same-sex marriage, and is the first step in a case that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read the rest of Bob Egelko’s San Francisco Chronicle article here.