Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: The reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is.
Speaker 3: Because of love. It's because of.
Speaker 2: Who we love that people think we're loving in the
Speaker 2: wrong way. So what's the central language, what's the central
Speaker 2: structure of love in this society? And of course that
Speaker 2: central structure and central language is marriage. So I thought
Speaker 2: if we could claim that structure, if we could claim
Speaker 2: that language as ours, that would change how non gay
Speaker 2: people understood who gay people are and would build support
Speaker 2: not only for us to have marriage, which is important
Speaker 2: in its own right, but to have everything.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll learn about Evan Wolfson, otherwise known
Speaker 1: as Mister Marriage, the man who spent thirty two years
Speaker 1: fighting to win gay marriage in America. From iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm joining in Solvice and this is What We Loved.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about my own memories around
Speaker 1: marriage growing up. I grew up Athletic an Indian, and
Speaker 1: marriage is sacred in both of those cultures. Even though
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was gay when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I just knew there was something about marriage that didn't
Speaker 1: fit me. I remember attending my cousin's wedding when I
Speaker 1: was eleven years old. She looked beautiful in this all
Speaker 1: white gown that had a long train, But even then
Speaker 1: I knew that I would never be the groom waiting
Speaker 1: for his bride at the altar. I was mostly enamored
Speaker 1: by the pearls and the last detail in my cousin's gown.
Speaker 1: Looking back, I now realize I never thought i'd get
Speaker 1: married because marriage wasn't something I was allowed to aspire to.
Speaker 1: My next guest, Evan Wolfson, was one of the people
Speaker 1: that changed that for me and for so many other
Speaker 1: queer Americans. Part of the reason for this podcast is
Speaker 1: to introduce us to the queer heroes that pioneered and
Speaker 1: fought for our rights. Evan is one of the architects
Speaker 1: of gay marriage in America. He spent thirty two years
Speaker 1: working to make gay marriage the law of the land.
Speaker 1: He started working on the legal argument in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and three he founded an organization
Speaker 1: called Freedom to Marry. It was responsible not just for
Speaker 1: creating the legal road mop but also for opening America's
Speaker 1: mind to the idea of gay people getting married. And yet,
Speaker 1: even though he's nicknamed Mister Marriage, it was amazing to
Speaker 1: learn that, just like me, when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: he didn't think he'd get married either.
Speaker 2: One of the things I actually mentioned in my book
Speaker 2: was I relate the story of a childhood memory I have,
Speaker 2: and it was probably from when I was around ten
Speaker 2: or eleven, and I was lying in bed in my parents'
Speaker 2: bedroom with my mom, and we were watching TV and
Speaker 2: chatting and so on, and I turned to my mom
Speaker 2: and I can remember doing this kind of out of
Speaker 2: the blue to her and saying, I don't think I'll
Speaker 2: ever get married.
Speaker 3: Her reaction, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: And I think what I meant at the time, without
Speaker 2: even fully knowing it or understanding it, was that the
Speaker 2: images that were being presented to kids like me of
Speaker 2: what marriage was somehow just didn't fit. And I do
Speaker 2: again have this very singular memory from that early age
Speaker 2: of that conversation and of course, what it turned out
Speaker 2: was kids like me, of course, should be able to
Speaker 2: get married. It was the images that were being presented,
Speaker 2: it was the language. It was the law that was wrong,
Speaker 2: not us. And later on I found my way to
Speaker 2: changing that.
Speaker 1: And that's such a good segment. When was the first
Speaker 1: time you knew something was different and you maybe thought
Speaker 1: you felt intrigued by something gay?
Speaker 2: So I think I always knew as a kid in
Speaker 2: elementary school, I was aware of being different, but that
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily have a finger on it until you know,
Speaker 2: I got a little older, and I remember this episode
Speaker 2: where I was walking to school, elementary school, and this
Speaker 2: kid yelled at me, do you know what a fagot is?
Speaker 2: And I responded to him, yes, a faggot is a
Speaker 2: bundle of sticks, because I had read this book of
Speaker 2: Japanese fairy tales which I remember, and it talked about
Speaker 2: a fact carrying a fagot of sticks. But of course
Speaker 2: I then found out what he meant by that taunt.
Speaker 2: So from a very early age, and even before I
Speaker 2: had a full understanding of what I was feeling or thinking,
Speaker 2: I was aware of being different, and definitely in elementary
Speaker 2: school I was aware of being attracted to boys. And
Speaker 2: whether I had the word gay in mind or not
Speaker 2: at that point, I don't know, but I remember there
Speaker 2: was somehow this issue of I think it was Life
Speaker 2: Magazine could have been looking at that point, and there
Speaker 2: was this picture of two young guys sitting together, probably
Speaker 2: with teenagers.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I would have been fifteen, sixteen, fourteen, I don't know exactly,
Speaker 2: but it made such an impact on me. I wanted
Speaker 2: to know those boys. I wanted to be with those boys.
Speaker 2: The cover, well, it was if to the extent I
Speaker 2: remember them. They were sitting next to each other, probably
Speaker 2: one had his arm around the other, Their legs were,
Speaker 2: you know, next to each other. They probably were wearing shorts.
Speaker 3: So it was.
Speaker 2: A pre language awareness of an attraction and a desire
Speaker 2: and an interest and an affinity to these you know,
Speaker 2: guys I don't even know. And on the one hand,
Speaker 2: it was innocent enough that it was lying on the
Speaker 2: kitchen counter in Life magazine. But I was able to
Speaker 2: find something that touched a chord in me even before
Speaker 2: I was ready to start singing that song.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that you mentioned how that was one
Speaker 1: of your first experiences with this little boy calling you
Speaker 1: a fuggot or saying do you know what that is?
Speaker 1: And I have the same experience that I felt like
Speaker 1: for me, it was almost as though kids could smell
Speaker 1: it on me. It's funny how we share a lot
Speaker 1: of us share those experiences.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and this is why history actually is so relevant
Speaker 2: because it does actually bring you the experiences and journeys
Speaker 2: of previous generations. It's very personal and individual, so it's
Speaker 2: not just about what the group has achieved in a
Speaker 2: particular time or era. There's also the individual and it's
Speaker 2: important to remember that even today.
Speaker 1: So when did you end up coming out? Was it
Speaker 1: in college?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the answer is no. I went to college
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy four to nineteen seventy eight. I was
Speaker 2: not openly gay. I really didn't do anything gay for.
Speaker 3: The most part.
Speaker 2: I never wound up having sex with a guy at
Speaker 2: that point I wanted to. I was kind of feeling
Speaker 2: like I wish I knew what to do. And you
Speaker 2: know that sounds kind of dumb, because there was a
Speaker 2: gay bar on the edge of campus that people knew
Speaker 2: and talked about. But I never had the courage or
Speaker 2: sort of wherewithal to leave the coll in the dorm
Speaker 2: room and go over there. So during college I just
Speaker 2: never found the pathway or the luck of being hit on, etc.
Speaker 2: Or at least hit on hard enough that I fell
Speaker 2: to come out.
Speaker 1: I just feel like in college hormones are raging, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of the time where gay men. There's so
Speaker 1: many stories of gay men that will go undercover or
Speaker 1: hide their sort of sexuality but still have these gay experiences.
Speaker 1: And you weren't sort of desperate to have that.
Speaker 2: Well, I wasn't desperate to have it, I guess, or
Speaker 2: at least not desperate enough.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm projected.
Speaker 2: No, No, I think it's a very fair comment. I
Speaker 2: guess you could say I was sexually motivated enough that
Speaker 2: I did have girlfriends in Oh wow, so you were
Speaker 2: having sex with women. I did have sex with women
Speaker 2: in college. Yes, two women, and one remains a very
Speaker 2: very close friend.
Speaker 3: And at the time, you know, sex is sex.
Speaker 2: It was, it worked, it was I enjoyed it, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't really who I was and what I wanted.
Speaker 2: And once I actually did figure out my way to
Speaker 2: having gay sex and having gay relationships, I haven't gone back.
Speaker 2: And of course, ironically I found it in a place
Speaker 2: that people would think would be much much more difficult
Speaker 2: than college or whatever. It was in the Peace Corps
Speaker 2: in West Africa in Togo.
Speaker 1: After graduating college, I've enjoyed the Peace Corps and travel
Speaker 1: to Africa for two years. It was there that he
Speaker 1: had his first major revelation that planted the seeds of
Speaker 1: gay marriage in his mind.
Speaker 2: So I was in the small village about a half
Speaker 2: hour off the nearest paved road, so you know, you
Speaker 2: had to ride on a dirt road for about thirty
Speaker 2: minutes to get to the nearest paved road and the
Speaker 2: other bigger market village to then ride to the nearest
Speaker 2: quote so remote and yeah remote. And I was there
Speaker 2: for two years. So in the middle of this village,
Speaker 2: in the middle of you quote unquote nowhere is where
Speaker 2: I first began having sex, wow, and having not really
Speaker 2: relationships but certainly friendships.
Speaker 1: And was it illegal there?
Speaker 3: It was illegal.
Speaker 2: I remember one day going to the school yard where
Speaker 2: I was teaching, and there was a notice posted on
Speaker 2: the bulletin board that stated the anti gay, anti so
Speaker 2: called asodomy law and you know, warning basically that homosexualized
Speaker 2: is illegal, And of course it terrified me. Not enough
Speaker 2: to stop, but it did give me one of many,
Speaker 2: you know, sleepless nights where I was afraid something I
Speaker 2: was doing would catch the eyes of the village. But
Speaker 2: I never had any actual bad incident, but I do
Speaker 2: remember that thing appearing on the bulletin board and it
Speaker 2: being very terrifying.
Speaker 3: So it was illegal to have sex.
Speaker 1: What was the consequence, like, go to jailism?
Speaker 3: Yeah it was, I don't remember. It was five years,
Speaker 3: ten years, whatever, it.
Speaker 1: Was five or ten years. Oh yeah, Wow, I'm curious
Speaker 1: to know what was queer life like in this remote
Speaker 1: village in the eighties, yeah, or in the late seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 2: Well, there was no queer life as far as I knew,
Speaker 2: but there were friendships, and in those friendships I was
Speaker 2: eventually able to find some guys who I would have
Speaker 2: sex with. And what I discovered and this was one
Speaker 2: of the major epiphanies of my young life at this
Speaker 2: point that later set the stage for my writing my
Speaker 2: thesis on marriage and launched my career. But at the
Speaker 2: time it was just an observation. I discovered that many
Speaker 2: of the guys I was having sex with were not gay.
Speaker 2: I mean they probably They were happy to do it.
Speaker 2: They were curious. It was, you know, sex, so why not,
Speaker 2: they liked me, whatever the mix of motives on there,
Speaker 2: and we did it and it could be great, it
Speaker 2: could be fun, or it could be you know eh.
Speaker 2: But it just really wasn't for them in the same
Speaker 2: way that it definitely was for me. But some of
Speaker 2: the guys that I stumbled into this opportunity to have
Speaker 2: sex with were probably gay. I mean I thought they
Speaker 2: were actually more like me. And yet they lived in
Speaker 2: a society where the images, the law, as you and
Speaker 2: I discussed, and even the language just did not allow
Speaker 2: for a vision of a life that would be true
Speaker 2: to who they are. So that really taught me something important,
Speaker 2: which is that who you are is profoundly affected by
Speaker 2: the structures, the opportunities, the law, and even the language
Speaker 2: that your society gives you, even on something as central
Speaker 2: to who you are as your sexual and romantic attractions.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you aren't able to see or
Speaker 1: even know that there's the possibility to be out and
Speaker 1: to be proud, you don't even think that's who you are.
Speaker 2: You don't know that there is a quote category of
Speaker 2: gay people. You don't know that there's a kind of
Speaker 2: life that can be led this way as opposed to
Speaker 2: that way. It's just a given or a natural that
Speaker 2: there's only this and there's only that, and you have
Speaker 2: to find a way to break out of that in
Speaker 2: order to envision a different kind of life for yourself.
Speaker 2: And then you have to break out of the law
Speaker 2: and the social forces in order to then be free
Speaker 2: to act on that. And that's the work of my activism,
Speaker 2: and that's the work of each one of us in
Speaker 2: our own personal lives, even if you don't think of
Speaker 2: it as activism. You have to find a way to
Speaker 2: figure out who you are, what you want, and how
Speaker 2: you can make it happen for yourself.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty and Evan is back in the US
Speaker 1: from the Peace Corps. He's officially out and enrolled as
Speaker 1: a law student at Harvard. For his Harvard thesis, he
Speaker 1: wrote about why gay marriage was an important step on
Speaker 1: the road to full equality. It's one of the earliest
Speaker 1: formal arguments in modern history made for gay marriage. Evan's
Speaker 1: thesis would later become America's roadmap to legalizing same sex marriage.
Speaker 1: The history of gay marriage in America is actually pretty recent.
Speaker 1: The first legal records of gay people trying to obtain
Speaker 1: marriage licenses are from the nineteen seventies, after the Stonewall Riots.
Speaker 1: But this movement toward progress was met with backlash. Later
Speaker 1: that decade, states across a Maria began enacting bans against
Speaker 1: gay marriage. The country would go on to adopt an
Speaker 1: ultra conservative attitude for the next three decades. This helped
Speaker 1: elect Ronald Reagan, a staunch conservative, to the White House.
Speaker 1: His campaign slogan make America Great Again. By the eighties,
Speaker 1: gay marriage wasn't even a priority for most gay rights groups.
Speaker 1: Gay sex was still illegal in multiple states, and the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis was just starting to creep up. This was
Speaker 1: the backdrop to Evan writing his thesis on gay marriage
Speaker 1: despite the opposition, though he had a vision. So you
Speaker 1: come back to the US and you go to Harvard
Speaker 1: Law School and you're writing your thesis on gay marriage.
Speaker 1: What sort of sparked your interests in gay marriage at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: So at the time I knew I wanted to write
Speaker 2: about how to make the world better.
Speaker 3: For gay people.
Speaker 1: And you're out at this point.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: By this point law school, I come back from my
Speaker 2: I've now had sex, I now know what I want,
Speaker 2: and so I start this process of coming out to classmates,
Speaker 2: to casual friends, and I come out to my family.
Speaker 3: And so I decide as part of.
Speaker 2: That that I want to write about how we can
Speaker 2: change the world, how we can make the world better
Speaker 2: for gay people. I drew first on that Peace Corps
Speaker 2: experience of who you are being shaped by the forces
Speaker 2: and the language around you. And then I also drew
Speaker 2: on another important formative experience that happened while I was
Speaker 2: in law school. So i'd come back from the Peace Corps,
Speaker 2: I was obviously making friends and finding sex and finding boyfriends,
Speaker 2: trying to build.
Speaker 3: A whole life.
Speaker 2: And then I also squeeze in a little law school
Speaker 2: during all of that. And one day I read in
Speaker 2: the New York Times book review about this groundbreaking new
Speaker 2: book called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality written by a
Speaker 2: guy named John Boswell, a professor at Yale, that had
Speaker 2: come out, and I immediately knew I had to go
Speaker 2: out and get it and did. It was this massive
Speaker 2: telling of history. It was basically telling of the first
Speaker 2: several thousand years of Western history, tracing from Biblical times
Speaker 2: to essentially the Renaissance, the way in which homosexuality had
Speaker 2: been treated in different societies, and the forces and factors
Speaker 2: that explained the different ways in which different societies had
Speaker 2: encountered gay people and treated gay people and understood homosexuality.
Speaker 3: And this book changed my life.
Speaker 2: This is the book that changed my life, because what
Speaker 2: it showed me was that things had not always been
Speaker 2: the way they were now in twentieth century America, in
Speaker 2: you know, nineteen eighties, in the circumstances and ways in
Speaker 2: which gay people like me were treated in which homosexuality
Speaker 2: was disdained. That yes, there had been terrible periods in
Speaker 2: which that had been the case in other societies, But
Speaker 2: there also had been many societies that extolled same sex
Speaker 2: love or the thought of it is just perfectly natural
Speaker 2: and not even that important, you know, a distinction. And
Speaker 2: that gave me this insight that if things had once
Speaker 2: been different, they could be different again.
Speaker 3: We could change this.
Speaker 2: And so, drawing on that book and drawing on this
Speaker 2: experience in the Peace Corps, I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: so I want to write about why gay people are
Speaker 2: oppressed why is it bad today unlike all these other societies,
Speaker 2: and what.
Speaker 3: Can we change and how can we change it?
Speaker 2: And what I concluded in thinking about it was the
Speaker 2: reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is because
Speaker 2: of love. It's because of who we love that people
Speaker 2: think we're loving in the wrong way, we're choosing to love.
Speaker 2: And so then I asked myself, Okay, so what's the
Speaker 2: central language, what's the central structure of love in this
Speaker 2: society and indeed in almost every other society that's ever existent,
Speaker 2: And of course that central structure and central language is marriage.
Speaker 1: Marriage.
Speaker 3: So I thought, if we.
Speaker 2: Could claim that structure, if we could claim that language
Speaker 2: as ours, it would change how non gay people understood
Speaker 2: who gay people are, and would build support not only
Speaker 2: for us to have marriage, which is important in its
Speaker 2: own right, but to have everything, to just have full
Speaker 2: opportunity and inclusion and dignity and respect and freedom in
Speaker 2: our society. And so that led me to write about marriage.
Speaker 2: And then the very end of the paper, after I
Speaker 2: went through all kinds of history and popular culture and
Speaker 2: talked about the movies and had a whole chapter on
Speaker 2: feminism and sex roles, etc.
Speaker 3: At the end, I threw in a.
Speaker 2: Little bit of law and talked about here's the legal
Speaker 2: pathway that the courts could follow. And I think it
Speaker 2: was because this paper was so sprawling and so multidisciplinary
Speaker 2: that my professor had no idea what to make of
Speaker 2: this paper, and it only got to be. It got
Speaker 2: to be because the law was almost and afterthought, it
Speaker 2: was like the last part, although flash forward thirty two
Speaker 2: years later, the legal roadmap that the Supreme Court followed
Speaker 2: in our marriage victory was very much the legal argument
Speaker 2: that I made in my paper. And what that showed
Speaker 2: was that the paper had its finger on something important,
Speaker 2: which was it wasn't just about the legal argument. It
Speaker 2: was about getting decision makers, including the public, to want
Speaker 2: to get to the right answer, to be able to understand,
Speaker 2: to be able to see the answer.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because you write this thesis about gay marriage
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, but they're actually still sodomy laws
Speaker 1: on the books, so it's illegal too for people that
Speaker 1: don't know what's oto me is it's gay sex pretty
Speaker 1: much so in some states, while you're talking about gay marriage,
Speaker 1: there are some states where it's actually I legal to
Speaker 1: have sex at the time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean as a young attorney when I
Speaker 2: began volunteering for Lambda Legal, one of the important gay
Speaker 2: legal rights groups and one of the few that existed
Speaker 2: at the time. I'm in the early eighties, when I
Speaker 2: began volunteering and then ultimately becoming a volunteer attorney and
Speaker 2: then later going.
Speaker 3: To work there.
Speaker 2: I wrote the brief, the quote unquote gay brief in
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court case Bowers versus Hardwick, which was a
Speaker 2: case in which we challenged the so called sodomy laws.
Speaker 1: Tell me what happened in that yeah.
Speaker 2: So essentially, in that case, the police burst into a
Speaker 2: guy named Michael Hardwick's bedroom, found him there with another
Speaker 2: guy having oral sex. This was in Georgia, and arrested him.
Speaker 2: And when news of that arrest came to this small
Speaker 2: little band of activists, including me, we seized on this
Speaker 2: as an opportunity to take his case to the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court to try to strike down the so called sodomy's laws,
Speaker 2: these laws that made it illegal to have same sex
Speaker 2: sexual intimacy, and we argued that that was a violation
Speaker 2: of his personal freedom and dignity, the freedom we all
Speaker 2: as Americans have to intimate association to be able to
Speaker 2: make our own decisions about whom we have sex with,
Speaker 2: and equality being treated equally, that if it wasn't illegal
Speaker 2: for others, it shouldn't be prescribed by the state against
Speaker 2: gay people. And we fought that case all the way
Speaker 2: up to the Supreme Court, and on June thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six, we lost WOW five to four. And I
Speaker 2: still remember getting that phone call from one of my
Speaker 2: dear friends and spending about two or three days wondering
Speaker 2: if I could even stay a lawyer. Did I really
Speaker 2: even believe.
Speaker 1: It was a big loss.
Speaker 2: It was a huge loss, It was an epic loss,
Speaker 2: and I really wondered whether I could stay in the system,
Speaker 2: whether I believed in change. And I spent about two
Speaker 2: or three days until I finally decided that the reason
Speaker 2: this happened is not enough people know who gay people are,
Speaker 2: and that if more of us came out and told
Speaker 2: our stories and had conversations with them and pushed them
Speaker 2: to think about their values, that we could change it.
Speaker 3: We could fix it.
Speaker 2: And so I went out that day to the Oscar
Speaker 2: Wild Bookstore, which.
Speaker 3: Existed then in the West Village.
Speaker 2: And bought a little pink triangle pin and put it
Speaker 2: on and said I will not take this off until
Speaker 2: we overturn Hardwick. And I wore it for the next
Speaker 2: seventeen years until we succeeded. And I was on Anderson
Speaker 2: Cooper's show when we got the news of the win,
Speaker 2: and while on the show talking about what it meant
Speaker 2: and how then we're now going to move forward and
Speaker 2: win the freedom to marry, which at the time seemed
Speaker 2: uncertain to many people. This was two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: I took off my pink triangle pin and put on
Speaker 2: a Freedom to Marry pin and said, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 2: going to wear this until we win the freedom to marry,
Speaker 2: which I then wore for the next twelve.
Speaker 3: Years or so.
Speaker 1: You have a funny story about Michael hardwith too right,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Know funny it is, yeah, so yeah, gee, we'll go
Speaker 2: with that. So we all went to have breakfast in
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court cafeteria on the March Day in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six when we argued the Hardware case. And so
Speaker 2: we're sitting there having breakfast and the team is talking
Speaker 2: and I happened to look up and saw this drop
Speaker 2: dead gorgeous guy walk into the cafeteria. So you know,
Speaker 2: while I was still doing my lawyer thing, I was
Speaker 2: actually really looking at this very cute guy who came in,
Speaker 2: who then proceeded to come over to our table and
Speaker 2: introduce himself. And it was Michael Hardwood. And so that
Speaker 2: was my meeting of the plaintiff. And we sat and
Speaker 2: chatted and so and we immediately hit it off. And
Speaker 2: so we went into the Supreme Court together, sat together
Speaker 2: in the argument.
Speaker 3: Whenever the Supreme Court would ask a hostile.
Speaker 2: Or difficult question, we would, you know, like squeeze each
Speaker 2: other's knee or like look at each other with this
Speaker 2: total energy and chemistry flowing between us. Afterwards, we all
Speaker 2: went out to lunch and we're all talking about how
Speaker 2: did we think it go?
Speaker 3: We all thought we were gonna win.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile Michael and I were looking at each other,
Speaker 2: looking at you, looking, and finally had the chemical idea
Speaker 2: of let's get out of here. And so we went out
Speaker 2: and went for a walk. And it was this gorgeous
Speaker 2: March day in nineteen eighty six. The cherry trees were out,
Speaker 2: my first time ever seeing them. The whole city was
Speaker 2: beautiful and gorgeous, and so we strolled and strolled and
Speaker 2: strolled throughout Washington under the cherry trees, stopped in front
Speaker 2: of the White House, kissed defiantly, and spent the day together.
Speaker 2: I'd later discovered amongst my friends it was this total
Speaker 2: scandal because they were like shocked that, you know, these
Speaker 2: two gay guys, despite everything, found time to go and
Speaker 2: get to the core of what it was all about
Speaker 2: in even in the midst of this historic day.
Speaker 1: You know, kind of going back to your journey, Evan,
Speaker 1: by the nineties, you're really starting to get into the
Speaker 1: gay marriage court cases. But was it a personal dream
Speaker 1: of yours by this point to get married?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I always wanted to, if not get married,
Speaker 2: at least I always wanted to fall in love and
Speaker 2: have a partner. And I spent many, many, many of
Speaker 2: my early years as an activist and as the most
Speaker 2: prominent activist, pushing and arguing and fighting for the freedom
Speaker 2: to marry. Kind of whinily single?
Speaker 1: Were you lonely?
Speaker 2: Yes, sure I was lonely. You know, I was also
Speaker 2: dating and trying and cruising and so on. But yes,
Speaker 2: I very much wanted to have a boyfriend. So I
Speaker 2: would sometimes joke with people that when they would point
Speaker 2: out how ironic it was that I'm single, you know,
Speaker 2: even though I'm mister marriage, and I would say I'm
Speaker 2: closer to winning marriage for gay people than i'm and
Speaker 2: than I am to having a boyfriend myself.
Speaker 1: Evan Wilson had one of the biggest civil rights victories
Speaker 1: in American history in twenty fifteen. He and his organization,
Speaker 1: Freedom to Marry, worked to push the issue of gay
Speaker 1: marriage all the way to the Supreme Court, and they won.
Speaker 1: Freedom to Marry was essentially a campaign aimed at opening
Speaker 1: the hearts of Americans to the idea of gay people
Speaker 1: getting married. They went state by state, educating people, sharing
Speaker 1: stories of queer love, and building new allies. In a
Speaker 1: little over a decade, Freedom to Marry had helped increase
Speaker 1: American approval for gay marriage from forty percent to sixty percent.
Speaker 1: One of the core elements of Evan's strategy was that
Speaker 1: before getting to the Supreme Court, he wanted two have
Speaker 1: already won gay marriage in a majority of states. This way,
Speaker 1: by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it
Speaker 1: would be a no brainer. But his journey to winning
Speaker 1: those states was peppered with loss. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: California held a vote called Prop eight where they voted
Speaker 1: against gay marriage. This was a massive loss for the movement.
Speaker 1: If a liberal state like California couldn't get on board
Speaker 1: with gay marriage, it could be a huge roadblock to
Speaker 1: nationwide victory. So two thousand and eight happens, and you
Speaker 1: lose one of the biggest liberal states, California. What was
Speaker 1: that like for you? Like such a huge loss?
Speaker 2: Well, the story of how we won marriage sprawls over
Speaker 2: several decades, so the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the
Speaker 2: two thousands. There are many, many battles and ups and
Speaker 2: downs and losses and defeats. So when California came along,
Speaker 2: many many people experienced that as the biggest blow, as
Speaker 2: the biggest loss.
Speaker 3: By then, I'd already gone.
Speaker 2: Through many of these losses and had had to figure
Speaker 2: out a way to keep it going through the losses.
Speaker 2: So I by that point I actually was explaining to
Speaker 2: people that this is part of what I called the
Speaker 2: scary work of winning. And the lessons from the scary
Speaker 2: work of winning include the lesson that you can't always win.
Speaker 2: You are going to lose battle. The question is how
Speaker 2: do you engage those losses so as to at least
Speaker 2: lose forward, how do you turn that loss and what
Speaker 2: you got out of that loss into the gain that,
Speaker 2: even if not enough to win in that particular moment,
Speaker 2: gives you what you need for the next round and
Speaker 2: the next round, following your strategy to your goal. And
Speaker 2: so two thousand and eight was experienced as a terrible cruel,
Speaker 2: difficult blow when we lost California, and it was a terrible, unfair,
Speaker 2: cruel blow and very harmful to individual couples. And at
Speaker 2: the same time, in two thousand and nine, we went
Speaker 2: on to our winning this year, ever, taking what we
Speaker 2: had lost, the lessons, the momentum, the awakened consciousness, the
Speaker 2: new determination on the part of many who were shocked
Speaker 2: by that loss into finally taking action, and we turned
Speaker 2: that into the next battle, on the next battle, on
Speaker 2: the next battle, and that's how we won. So I
Speaker 2: didn't experience it as the biggest loss. I experienced it
Speaker 2: as a painful loss that was also a galvani that
Speaker 2: took us.
Speaker 3: To a whole other level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and wins trump losses. I like the tell us about.
Speaker 2: So in my speech that I gave at another dark
Speaker 2: moment where we lost thirteen ballot measures in one year,
Speaker 2: and Bush got elected, and we were blamed for it.
Speaker 3: And this was in writing about the year two thousand.
Speaker 2: And four, I said, any year in which we lose
Speaker 2: thirteen ballot measures, painful and ugly as it is, and
Speaker 2: see somebody like Bush, an opponent, get elected to the
Speaker 2: White House, terrible as that is. If in that same
Speaker 2: year you've also won marriage in a state like Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: as we had, and couples have begun getting married for
Speaker 2: the first time, as they did in Massachusetts in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four, that's a winning year because the power
Speaker 2: of the win, the power of those couples getting married,
Speaker 2: and the stories of their love and the images that
Speaker 2: we can put in front of people in open hearts
Speaker 2: and minds, the win will trump the losses, you know,
Speaker 2: flashing forward to the end of our story here, when
Speaker 2: we won. By the time we won, after having lost
Speaker 2: and lost and lost and lost and lost and lost
Speaker 2: and lost over decades, we began winning and then winning,
Speaker 2: winning and losing, then winning, winning, winning, losing, losing, winning, winning, winning, wing,
Speaker 2: and by the end we won nearly one hundred court rulings,
Speaker 2: having lost almost all the early ones as a prelude
Speaker 2: to going to the Supreme Court and winning in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: and the freedom to marry struggle important as it was
Speaker 2: to win marriage, even more important is that it stands
Speaker 2: as proof and as a model for how to make
Speaker 2: the world better, proof that you can do it, proof
Speaker 2: that we can change things even when they look scary
Speaker 2: and bad.
Speaker 1: So in the midst of all of this, even though
Speaker 1: you've mentioned you weren't driven by your own personal desire
Speaker 1: to get married, you do end up meeting the love
Speaker 1: of your life and you get married. Correct, But what
Speaker 1: was it like actually experiencing the thing that you were
Speaker 1: fighting for.
Speaker 3: Yes, by the time I met my.
Speaker 2: Now husband Chung, freedom to marry was underway, and we
Speaker 2: clicked immediately from.
Speaker 3: The day we met.
Speaker 2: We were pretty much seeing each other steadily from that
Speaker 2: point on. And even though I'd always written and argued
Speaker 2: and preached about the power of love and that love
Speaker 2: is what this is about, now I was in the
Speaker 2: position of having it for myself and seeing its wondrous
Speaker 2: power and its effect. And the day we got married,
Speaker 2: when we actually got married, which was almost ten years
Speaker 2: after meeting, I could experience the power of the wedding
Speaker 2: and the whole getting ready to get married and inviting
Speaker 2: people your wedding and talking with people about your wedding
Speaker 2: and what are you going to wear to your wedding
Speaker 2: and who's coming to your wedding and all of that.
Speaker 2: Even though I knew it intellectually and had talked about
Speaker 2: it and written about it for years now, I experienced it,
Speaker 2: and the glow of that day still stays with me
Speaker 2: to this day, more than ten years later.
Speaker 1: Now take me to the moment where you actually win.
Speaker 1: So it's twenty fifteen and you get this news that
Speaker 1: gay marriage is now the law of the land, thirty
Speaker 1: two years in the making for you. What was that
Speaker 1: first private moment like for you when it really all
Speaker 1: hit you and you're married at this point?
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, I'm married. I have a wonderful team. The
Speaker 2: Freedom to Marry campaign is rocking, and we win. And
Speaker 2: this was June twenty sixth, twenty fifteen. So we're gathered
Speaker 2: around the table in the in the conference room, and
Speaker 2: we're all looking at our devices and clicking and pushing,
Speaker 2: and most of my staff is now at this point
Speaker 2: younger than I am, but nevertheless, I, the old guy
Speaker 2: in the room, was the one who actually saw it first,
Speaker 2: and I read that to the group, and then as
Speaker 2: soon as I read it, I was a little nervous
Speaker 2: because you know, people are going to take it seriously
Speaker 2: when I say it, and I wanted to be sure
Speaker 2: it was right. But then everybody started seeing saying that
Speaker 2: we had won, so of course we cheered. We had
Speaker 2: remembered because it was now the eighth day that we
Speaker 2: had gathered and done this to have champagne, So we
Speaker 2: quickly toasted champagne, and then we all ran to our
Speaker 2: battle stations to do the rest of the work we
Speaker 2: needed to do that day, to push out the victory,
Speaker 2: to explain it. And my job, as the only actual
Speaker 2: attorney at Freedom to Marry, was to go back and
Speaker 2: actually read the decision.
Speaker 3: So I go back to my office.
Speaker 2: And I'm reading the decision on my desktop and I
Speaker 2: started to cry.
Speaker 3: And I surprised.
Speaker 2: Myself by starting to cry, because, as I've said too
Speaker 2: many times, it really wasn't the personal emotion that was
Speaker 2: driving me. And at first I thought that I was
Speaker 2: crying because it actually was the paper I wrote in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three. It was like, exactly what we said
Speaker 2: was the right answer, and so I thought that was
Speaker 2: what was moving me, why I was crying, and it
Speaker 2: really wasn't actually until like two days later when that
Speaker 2: weekend happened to be. It was June twenty sixth, so
Speaker 2: it was Friday in twenty fifteen, and was Gay Pride,
Speaker 2: so it was, as you can imagine, this immense eruption
Speaker 2: of joy, celebration and people. I realized that part of
Speaker 2: the reason I was crying was a sense.
Speaker 3: Of relief that I had always believed we would win.
Speaker 2: I'd always communicated that I believe we would win over
Speaker 2: many many, many many years, repetitively conveyed it, and yet
Speaker 2: to now realize that I didn't have to keep doing it,
Speaker 2: that we didn't have to find hope again, and in
Speaker 2: the face.
Speaker 3: Of a loss, fight fight, fight, fight and.
Speaker 2: Pull back on the scary work of winning and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, that we actually had won. And
Speaker 2: that then made me think, Wow, I have really been
Speaker 2: hardened in this work over all these decades that it
Speaker 2: didn't even occur to me that I might feel relief
Speaker 2: like any other human being would until two days later.
Speaker 2: And what that then illustrated was this is work. It
Speaker 2: is difficult, it is hard, and even for people like
Speaker 2: me who always seemed confident and hopeful and determined and
Speaker 2: who were grateful to be in this role. And I
Speaker 2: wouldn't trade any of it. It was a privilege to
Speaker 2: be part of something meaningful and important, but it does
Speaker 2: require you to gird yourself for that and to rise
Speaker 2: to your moment.
Speaker 1: I love that, and you know you you have championed
Speaker 1: probably the biggest civil rights issue victory of a generation.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the sort of next frontier
Speaker 1: of LGBTQ fights.
Speaker 2: So on the day we won June twenty six, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I was actually, on that day finally able to get
Speaker 2: the New York Times to agree to run an op
Speaker 2: ed that I'd written, And my op ed was all about,
Speaker 2: as you just put it, what's next. And the only
Speaker 2: part of that that I don't like is the word next,
Speaker 2: because there really wasn't actually a next. We were always
Speaker 2: working on many things. It was never the case that
Speaker 2: we only worked on marriage. We were always working on
Speaker 2: youth and seniors and trans and employment and the military.
Speaker 2: So next kind of makes it sound like you do
Speaker 2: one thing and everybody agrees on that thing, and then
Speaker 2: you go to the next and that's.
Speaker 3: Not how it works. All we're all worrying on all
Speaker 3: these things.
Speaker 2: But some things are really effective, and some things are
Speaker 2: really galvanizing, and some things can bring along other wins.
Speaker 2: If and this is what my OpEd was about, we
Speaker 2: now harness what we've won to the next work and
Speaker 2: the next work and the next work. And harnessing is
Speaker 2: important because there's a tendency on the part of some
Speaker 2: people to think, Okay, we won that check, put it
Speaker 2: on a shelf, it's history, whereas it actually winning something
Speaker 2: as powerful as marriage can be the gift that keeps
Speaker 2: on giving. It can continues to be a changer of
Speaker 2: hearts and minds. So the many, many organizations and businesses
Speaker 2: and labor unions and ultimately politicians and academics and others
Speaker 2: who we brought along on marriage are now there for
Speaker 2: us as we fight to defend trans people or work
Speaker 2: to assure that every gay young person is growing up
Speaker 2: in a healthy environment. We have so much to keep
Speaker 2: working with if we build on what we've done and
Speaker 2: harness what we've done, rather than think we're just careering
Speaker 2: from one thing to another, as if nothing that ever
Speaker 2: happened before made any difference or wasn't a lot of work.
Speaker 2: That is, as I said, the gift that keeps on giving,
Speaker 2: so quote unquote, what's next. What's next is pushing back
Speaker 2: against the toxic and ugly attacks that we're seeing on
Speaker 2: trans people, on gay people, the efforts to roll back
Speaker 2: the gains that we won, which are connected to even
Speaker 2: deeper efforts to roll back even bigger gains for women,
Speaker 2: for racial equality.
Speaker 3: This is not the first.
Speaker 2: Time this has happened, but we now have the proof
Speaker 2: that we can change it. And there will be losses
Speaker 2: and ugliness and cruelty, but there is also always the
Speaker 2: power of change, and that's what we have shown.
Speaker 1: So last part of the interview. In one word or
Speaker 1: one sentence, what do these words mean? What is justice?
Speaker 2: Justice is that everybody be treated in a way that
Speaker 2: is right and kind and equal.
Speaker 1: Freedom.
Speaker 2: Freedom is fulfillment. Freedom is the ability to pursue your
Speaker 2: dreams in a world respectful of others, and live up
Speaker 2: to your full potential and your dream.
Speaker 1: And what is love. Love is.
Speaker 2: The sustaining, giving and getting that tells you you're not
Speaker 2: alone in this world, old that there are things that
Speaker 2: are bigger than you, and that you are cherished by
Speaker 2: others as well.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
Speaker 1: to tell your story, email us at butt we Loved
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com, or send us a message on
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a
Speaker 1: production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
Speaker 1: We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
Speaker 1: are Shehino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard, and Katrina Normal. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jay Bronson and rockel Ellis. If you love
Speaker 1: to this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.