Rob Reiner Compares Prop 8 to Brown v Board of Education

Actor and director Rob Reiner compared the importance of California's Proposition 8 case to the landmark civil rights case, Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that separate is not equal.

"We don't believe in separate but equal in any other legal position except this," Reiner said of same-sex marriage. "We feel that this is the last piece of the civil rights puzzle being put into place."

Reiner will play Prop. 8 proponent David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, in Dustin Lance Black's staging of his new play 8 tonight. Reiner said it's important that people see what happened in court because it shows the weakness of the opposition's case against marriage equality.

"This is basically a teaching tool," he said of the play. "Hopefully this play will then go onto schools and colleges around the country."

Reiner is also on the board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which mounted the legal challenge in California. He said marriage will do for normalization of gay people in culture what integrating schools helped do for African-Americans.

In the video below, watch Reiner's vigorous argument for marriage equality today on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

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