By AURELIO ROJAS, Sacramento Bee

Kenneth Starr and Shannon Minter, lead attorneys in the California Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of same-sex marriage in the state, are as different as the competing sides they represent.
Starr, dean of Pepperdine University School of Law, is best known for leading the inquiry into President Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern.

Angered by the passage of Proposition 8, grass-roots activists are working to place measures on the ballot to reverse California's ban on same-sex marriages.

On her second night home after giving birth by Caesarean section to her fourth child, Cindy Gaston's incision burst open and pus began oozing out.
Doctors at Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, where she had given birth, later determined she was infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

A leader of the campaign to defeat California's Proposition 8 has declined an invitation to attend the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, called it "disappointing and hurtful" that a prominent Orange County minister who backed the measure to ban gay marriage has been chosen to speak at the inauguration.

Few political groups have been as successful in recent years at shaping state policies as the Humane Society of the United States under Wayne Pacelle.
Now that the nation's largest animal rights group has effectively banned the caging of egg-laying hens in California, it is turning its focus to Washington.

As California sheds jobs at an alarming rate, increasing the ranks of the uninsured, the state-run Healthy Families program for children is preparing to close enrollment for the first time in its 10-year history.

A constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in California has lost support during the past two months and now trails by a 17-point margin.Just 38 percent of likely voters back Proposition 8, while 55 percent say they will vote against the Nov. 4 ballot measure, according to a new Field Poll. In July, the measure trailed by nine points.

The fate of California's 19 million egg-laying hens is coming to a polling place near you.Same-sex marriage, parental notification of abortion -- the November ballot is studded with weighty issues, but none is ruffling feathers like Proposition 2, which would effectively ban farms from raising hens in cages.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.