Pete Knight

Vocation

Notable

Family

American aeronautical engineer, politician, Vietnam War combat pilot, test pilot, and astronaut in the X-20 Dyna-Soar and North American X-15 programs. Knight holds the world's speed record for flight in a winged, powered aircraft. As a politician, he is noted as the author of California Proposition 22, a.k.a. the "Knight Initiative," the purpose of which was to ban same-sex marriage: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The proposition passed with 61.4% approval and 38.6% against. On 9 March 2004, Knight's son, David Knight, who is gay, married his partner during the period when San Francisco performed same-sex marriages in defiance of state law. These marriages were later nullified by the California Supreme Court in 2004. The Court later found Proposition 22 to be unconstitutional in In re Marriage Cases (2008). In addition to his gay son, Knight also had a younger brother who died of AIDS-related complications in 1995 at age 60. Of his younger brother, Knight would only say, "We never talked about it." Pete Knight died on 7 May 2004, aged 74, in Los Angeles, California. Link to Wikipedia biography