May 29, 2024 • 41 mins
Evan Wolfson was a major figure in the fight for gay marriage in America. He shares how - ironically - he never thought he'd get married, what changed his mind, and how his 32 year fight for marriage equality changed America.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Because of love. It's because of.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Who we love that people think we're loving in the
wrong way. So what's the central language, what's the central
structure of love in this society? And of course that
central structure and central language is marriage. So I thought
if we could claim that structure, if we could claim
(00:35):
that language as ours, that would change how non gay
people understood who gay people are and would build support
not only for us to have marriage, which is important
in its own right, but to have everything.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:14):
In this episode, we'll learn about Evan Wolfson, otherwise known
as Mister Marriage, the man who spent thirty two years
fighting to win gay marriage in America. From iHeart Podcasts.
I'm joining in Solvice and this is What We Loved.
(01:54):
I've been thinking a lot about my own memories around
marriage growing up. I grew up Athletic an Indian, and
marriage is sacred in both of those cultures. Even though
I didn't know I was gay when I was a kid,
I just knew there was something about marriage that didn't
fit me. I remember attending my cousin's wedding when I
(02:14):
was eleven years old. She looked beautiful in this all
white gown that had a long train, But even then
I knew that I would never be the groom waiting
for his bride at the altar. I was mostly enamored
by the pearls and the last detail in my cousin's gown.
Looking back, I now realize I never thought i'd get
(02:36):
married because marriage wasn't something I was allowed to aspire to.
My next guest, Evan Wolfson, was one of the people
that changed that for me and for so many other
queer Americans. Part of the reason for this podcast is
to introduce us to the queer heroes that pioneered and
(02:57):
fought for our rights. Evan is one of the architects
of gay marriage in America. He spent thirty two years
working to make gay marriage the law of the land.
He started working on the legal argument in the eighties,
and in two thousand and three he founded an organization
called Freedom to Marry. It was responsible not just for
(03:18):
creating the legal road mop but also for opening America's
mind to the idea of gay people getting married. And yet,
even though he's nicknamed Mister Marriage, it was amazing to
learn that, just like me, when he was a kid,
he didn't think he'd get married either.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
One of the things I actually mentioned in my book
was I relate the story of a childhood memory I have,
and it was probably from when I was around ten
or eleven, and I was lying in bed in my parents'
bedroom with my mom, and we were watching TV and
chatting and so on, and I turned to my mom
and I can remember doing this kind of out of
the blue to her and saying, I don't think I'll
(04:04):
ever get married.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Her reaction, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And I think what I meant at the time, without
even fully knowing it or understanding it, was that the
images that were being presented to kids like me of
what marriage was somehow just didn't fit. And I do
again have this very singular memory from that early age
of that conversation and of course, what it turned out
(04:28):
was kids like me, of course, should be able to
get married. It was the images that were being presented,
it was the language. It was the law that was wrong,
not us. And later on I found my way to
changing that.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And that's such a good segment. When was the first
time you knew something was different and you maybe thought
you felt intrigued by something gay?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So I think I always knew as a kid in
elementary school, I was aware of being different, but that
didn't necessarily have a finger on it until you know,
I got a little older, and I remember this episode
where I was walking to school, elementary school, and this
kid yelled at me, do you know what a fagot is?
(05:12):
And I responded to him, yes, a faggot is a
bundle of sticks, because I had read this book of
Japanese fairy tales which I remember, and it talked about
a fact carrying a fagot of sticks. But of course
I then found out what he meant by that taunt.
So from a very early age, and even before I
had a full understanding of what I was feeling or thinking,
(05:36):
I was aware of being different, and definitely in elementary
school I was aware of being attracted to boys. And
whether I had the word gay in mind or not
at that point, I don't know, but I remember there
was somehow this issue of I think it was Life
Magazine could have been looking at that point, and there
was this picture of two young guys sitting together, probably
(05:58):
with teenagers.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I would have been fifteen, sixteen, fourteen, I don't know exactly,
but it made such an impact on me. I wanted
to know those boys. I wanted to be with those boys.
The cover, well, it was if to the extent I
remember them. They were sitting next to each other, probably
one had his arm around the other, Their legs were,
(06:21):
you know, next to each other. They probably were wearing shorts.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A pre language awareness of an attraction and a desire
and an interest and an affinity to these you know,
guys I don't even know. And on the one hand,
it was innocent enough that it was lying on the
kitchen counter in Life magazine. But I was able to
find something that touched a chord in me even before
(06:48):
I was ready to start singing that song.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's so funny that you mentioned how that was one
of your first experiences with this little boy calling you
a fuggot or saying do you know what that is?
And I have the same experience that I felt like
for me, it was almost as though kids could smell
it on me. It's funny how we share a lot
(07:12):
of us share those experiences.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Absolutely, and this is why history actually is so relevant
because it does actually bring you the experiences and journeys
of previous generations. It's very personal and individual, so it's
not just about what the group has achieved in a
particular time or era. There's also the individual and it's
important to remember that even today.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So when did you end up coming out? Was it
in college?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, so the answer is no. I went to college
from nineteen seventy four to nineteen seventy eight. I was
not openly gay. I really didn't do anything gay for.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
The most part.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I never wound up having sex with a guy at
that point I wanted to. I was kind of feeling
like I wish I knew what to do. And you
know that sounds kind of dumb, because there was a
gay bar on the edge of campus that people knew
and talked about. But I never had the courage or
sort of wherewithal to leave the coll in the dorm
(08:11):
room and go over there. So during college I just
never found the pathway or the luck of being hit on, etc.
Or at least hit on hard enough that I fell
to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I just feel like in college hormones are raging, and
that's kind of the time where gay men. There's so
many stories of gay men that will go undercover or
hide their sort of sexuality but still have these gay experiences.
And you weren't sort of desperate to have that.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, I wasn't desperate to have it, I guess, or
at least not desperate enough.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Maybe I'm projected.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
No, No, I think it's a very fair comment. I
guess you could say I was sexually motivated enough that
I did have girlfriends in Oh wow, so you were
having sex with women. I did have sex with women
in college. Yes, two women, and one remains a very
very close friend.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And at the time, you know, sex is sex.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It was, it worked, it was I enjoyed it, but
it wasn't really who I was and what I wanted.
And once I actually did figure out my way to
having gay sex and having gay relationships, I haven't gone back.
And of course, ironically I found it in a place
that people would think would be much much more difficult
(09:30):
than college or whatever. It was in the Peace Corps
in West Africa in Togo.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
After graduating college, I've enjoyed the Peace Corps and travel
to Africa for two years. It was there that he
had his first major revelation that planted the seeds of
gay marriage in his mind.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I was in the small village about a half
hour off the nearest paved road, so you know, you
had to ride on a dirt road for about thirty
minutes to get to the nearest paved road and the
other bigger market village to then ride to the nearest
quote so remote and yeah remote. And I was there
for two years. So in the middle of this village,
(10:09):
in the middle of you quote unquote nowhere is where
I first began having sex, wow, and having not really
relationships but certainly friendships.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And was it illegal there?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It was illegal.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I remember one day going to the school yard where
I was teaching, and there was a notice posted on
the bulletin board that stated the anti gay, anti so
called asodomy law and you know, warning basically that homosexualized
is illegal, And of course it terrified me. Not enough
(10:44):
to stop, but it did give me one of many,
you know, sleepless nights where I was afraid something I
was doing would catch the eyes of the village. But
I never had any actual bad incident, but I do
remember that thing appearing on the bulletin board and it
being very terrifying.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
So it was illegal to have sex.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
What was the consequence, like, go to jailism?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah it was, I don't remember. It was five years,
ten years, whatever, it.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Was five or ten years. Oh yeah, Wow, I'm curious
to know what was queer life like in this remote
village in the eighties, yeah, or in the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I was there from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, there was no queer life as far as I knew,
but there were friendships, and in those friendships I was
eventually able to find some guys who I would have
sex with. And what I discovered and this was one
of the major epiphanies of my young life at this
point that later set the stage for my writing my
(11:47):
thesis on marriage and launched my career. But at the
time it was just an observation. I discovered that many
of the guys I was having sex with were not gay.
I mean they probably They were happy to do it.
They were curious. It was, you know, sex, so why not,
they liked me, whatever the mix of motives on there,
(12:08):
and we did it and it could be great, it
could be fun, or it could be you know eh.
But it just really wasn't for them in the same
way that it definitely was for me. But some of
the guys that I stumbled into this opportunity to have
sex with were probably gay. I mean I thought they
were actually more like me. And yet they lived in
(12:31):
a society where the images, the law, as you and
I discussed, and even the language just did not allow
for a vision of a life that would be true
to who they are. So that really taught me something important,
which is that who you are is profoundly affected by
(12:52):
the structures, the opportunities, the law, and even the language
that your society gives you, even on something as central
to who you are as your sexual and romantic attractions.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
In other words, if you aren't able to see or
even know that there's the possibility to be out and
to be proud, you don't even think that's who you are.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You don't know that there is a quote category of
gay people. You don't know that there's a kind of
life that can be led this way as opposed to
that way. It's just a given or a natural that
there's only this and there's only that, and you have
to find a way to break out of that in
order to envision a different kind of life for yourself.
And then you have to break out of the law
(13:37):
and the social forces in order to then be free
to act on that. And that's the work of my activism,
and that's the work of each one of us in
our own personal lives, even if you don't think of
it as activism. You have to find a way to
figure out who you are, what you want, and how
you can make it happen for yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It's nineteen eighty and Evan is back in the US
from the Peace Corps. He's officially out and enrolled as
a law student at Harvard. For his Harvard thesis, he
wrote about why gay marriage was an important step on
the road to full equality. It's one of the earliest
formal arguments in modern history made for gay marriage. Evan's
thesis would later become America's roadmap to legalizing same sex marriage.
(14:39):
The history of gay marriage in America is actually pretty recent.
The first legal records of gay people trying to obtain
marriage licenses are from the nineteen seventies, after the Stonewall Riots.
But this movement toward progress was met with backlash. Later
that decade, states across a Maria began enacting bans against
(15:02):
gay marriage. The country would go on to adopt an
ultra conservative attitude for the next three decades. This helped
elect Ronald Reagan, a staunch conservative, to the White House.
His campaign slogan make America Great Again. By the eighties,
gay marriage wasn't even a priority for most gay rights groups.
(15:23):
Gay sex was still illegal in multiple states, and the
AIDS crisis was just starting to creep up. This was
the backdrop to Evan writing his thesis on gay marriage
despite the opposition, though he had a vision. So you
come back to the US and you go to Harvard
Law School and you're writing your thesis on gay marriage.
(15:47):
What sort of sparked your interests in gay marriage at
the time.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
So at the time I knew I wanted to write
about how to make the world better.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
For gay people.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And you're out at this point.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
By this point law school, I come back from my
I've now had sex, I now know what I want,
and so I start this process of coming out to classmates,
to casual friends, and I come out to my family.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
And so I decide as part of.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
That that I want to write about how we can
change the world, how we can make the world better
for gay people. I drew first on that Peace Corps
experience of who you are being shaped by the forces
and the language around you. And then I also drew
on another important formative experience that happened while I was
in law school. So i'd come back from the Peace Corps,
I was obviously making friends and finding sex and finding boyfriends,
(16:37):
trying to build.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
A whole life.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And then I also squeeze in a little law school
during all of that. And one day I read in
the New York Times book review about this groundbreaking new
book called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality written by a
guy named John Boswell, a professor at Yale, that had
come out, and I immediately knew I had to go
out and get it and did. It was this massive
(17:00):
telling of history. It was basically telling of the first
several thousand years of Western history, tracing from Biblical times
to essentially the Renaissance, the way in which homosexuality had
been treated in different societies, and the forces and factors
that explained the different ways in which different societies had
(17:21):
encountered gay people and treated gay people and understood homosexuality.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
And this book changed my life.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
This is the book that changed my life, because what
it showed me was that things had not always been
the way they were now in twentieth century America, in
you know, nineteen eighties, in the circumstances and ways in
which gay people like me were treated in which homosexuality
was disdained. That yes, there had been terrible periods in
(17:50):
which that had been the case in other societies, But
there also had been many societies that extolled same sex
love or the thought of it is just perfectly natural
and not even that important, you know, a distinction. And
that gave me this insight that if things had once
been different, they could be different again.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
We could change this.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And so, drawing on that book and drawing on this
experience in the Peace Corps, I thought to myself, Okay,
so I want to write about why gay people are
oppressed why is it bad today unlike all these other societies,
and what.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Can we change and how can we change it?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And what I concluded in thinking about it was the
reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is because
of love. It's because of who we love that people
think we're loving in the wrong way, we're choosing to love.
And so then I asked myself, Okay, so what's the
central language, what's the central structure of love in this
(18:48):
society and indeed in almost every other society that's ever existent,
And of course that central structure and central language is marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Marriage.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
So I thought, if we.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Could claim that structure, if we could claim that language
as ours, it would change how non gay people understood
who gay people are, and would build support not only
for us to have marriage, which is important in its
own right, but to have everything, to just have full
opportunity and inclusion and dignity and respect and freedom in
(19:22):
our society. And so that led me to write about marriage.
And then the very end of the paper, after I
went through all kinds of history and popular culture and
talked about the movies and had a whole chapter on
feminism and sex roles, etc.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
At the end, I threw in a.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Little bit of law and talked about here's the legal
pathway that the courts could follow. And I think it
was because this paper was so sprawling and so multidisciplinary
that my professor had no idea what to make of
this paper, and it only got to be. It got
to be because the law was almost and afterthought, it
(20:00):
was like the last part, although flash forward thirty two
years later, the legal roadmap that the Supreme Court followed
in our marriage victory was very much the legal argument
that I made in my paper. And what that showed
was that the paper had its finger on something important,
which was it wasn't just about the legal argument. It
(20:20):
was about getting decision makers, including the public, to want
to get to the right answer, to be able to understand,
to be able to see the answer.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's interesting because you write this thesis about gay marriage
in the early eighties, but they're actually still sodomy laws
on the books, so it's illegal too for people that
don't know what's oto me is it's gay sex pretty
much so in some states, while you're talking about gay marriage,
there are some states where it's actually I legal to
(20:50):
have sex at the time.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So yeah, I mean as a young attorney when I
began volunteering for Lambda Legal, one of the important gay
legal rights groups and one of the few that existed
at the time. I'm in the early eighties, when I
began volunteering and then ultimately becoming a volunteer attorney and
then later going.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
To work there.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I wrote the brief, the quote unquote gay brief in
the Supreme Court case Bowers versus Hardwick, which was a
case in which we challenged the so called sodomy laws.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Tell me what happened in that yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So essentially, in that case, the police burst into a
guy named Michael Hardwick's bedroom, found him there with another
guy having oral sex. This was in Georgia, and arrested him.
And when news of that arrest came to this small
little band of activists, including me, we seized on this
(21:42):
as an opportunity to take his case to the Supreme
Court to try to strike down the so called sodomy's laws,
these laws that made it illegal to have same sex
sexual intimacy, and we argued that that was a violation
of his personal freedom and dignity, the freedom we all
as Americans have to intimate association to be able to
make our own decisions about whom we have sex with,
(22:05):
and equality being treated equally, that if it wasn't illegal
for others, it shouldn't be prescribed by the state against
gay people. And we fought that case all the way
up to the Supreme Court, and on June thirtieth, nineteen
eighty six, we lost WOW five to four. And I
still remember getting that phone call from one of my
dear friends and spending about two or three days wondering
(22:26):
if I could even stay a lawyer. Did I really
even believe.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It was a big loss.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It was a huge loss, It was an epic loss,
and I really wondered whether I could stay in the system,
whether I believed in change. And I spent about two
or three days until I finally decided that the reason
this happened is not enough people know who gay people are,
and that if more of us came out and told
our stories and had conversations with them and pushed them
(22:51):
to think about their values, that we could change it.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
We could fix it.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
And so I went out that day to the Oscar
Wild Bookstore, which.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Existed then in the West Village.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And bought a little pink triangle pin and put it
on and said I will not take this off until
we overturn Hardwick. And I wore it for the next
seventeen years until we succeeded. And I was on Anderson
Cooper's show when we got the news of the win,
(23:20):
and while on the show talking about what it meant
and how then we're now going to move forward and
win the freedom to marry, which at the time seemed
uncertain to many people. This was two thousand and three.
I took off my pink triangle pin and put on
a Freedom to Marry pin and said, Okay, now I'm
going to wear this until we win the freedom to marry,
which I then wore for the next twelve.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Years or so.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You have a funny story about Michael hardwith too right,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Know funny it is, yeah, so yeah, gee, we'll go
with that. So we all went to have breakfast in
the Supreme Court cafeteria on the March Day in nineteen
eighty six when we argued the Hardware case. And so
we're sitting there having breakfast and the team is talking
and I happened to look up and saw this drop
(24:08):
dead gorgeous guy walk into the cafeteria. So you know,
while I was still doing my lawyer thing, I was
actually really looking at this very cute guy who came in,
who then proceeded to come over to our table and
introduce himself. And it was Michael Hardwood. And so that
was my meeting of the plaintiff. And we sat and
chatted and so and we immediately hit it off. And
(24:30):
so we went into the Supreme Court together, sat together
in the argument.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Whenever the Supreme Court would ask a hostile.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Or difficult question, we would, you know, like squeeze each
other's knee or like look at each other with this
total energy and chemistry flowing between us. Afterwards, we all
went out to lunch and we're all talking about how
did we think it go?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
We all thought we were gonna win.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And meanwhile Michael and I were looking at each other,
looking at you, looking, and finally had the chemical idea
of let's get out of here. And so we went out
and went for a walk. And it was this gorgeous
March day in nineteen eighty six. The cherry trees were out,
my first time ever seeing them. The whole city was
beautiful and gorgeous, and so we strolled and strolled and
strolled throughout Washington under the cherry trees, stopped in front
(25:15):
of the White House, kissed defiantly, and spent the day together.
I'd later discovered amongst my friends it was this total
scandal because they were like shocked that, you know, these
two gay guys, despite everything, found time to go and
get to the core of what it was all about
in even in the midst of this historic day.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You know, kind of going back to your journey, Evan,
by the nineties, you're really starting to get into the
gay marriage court cases. But was it a personal dream
of yours by this point to get married?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yes, I mean I always wanted to, if not get married,
at least I always wanted to fall in love and
have a partner. And I spent many, many, many of
my early years as an activist and as the most
prominent activist, pushing and arguing and fighting for the freedom
to marry. Kind of whinily single?
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Were you lonely?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yes, sure I was lonely. You know, I was also
dating and trying and cruising and so on. But yes,
I very much wanted to have a boyfriend. So I
would sometimes joke with people that when they would point
out how ironic it was that I'm single, you know,
even though I'm mister marriage, and I would say I'm
closer to winning marriage for gay people than i'm and
(26:30):
than I am to having a boyfriend myself.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Evan Wilson had one of the biggest civil rights victories
in American history in twenty fifteen. He and his organization,
Freedom to Marry, worked to push the issue of gay
marriage all the way to the Supreme Court, and they won.
Freedom to Marry was essentially a campaign aimed at opening
the hearts of Americans to the idea of gay people
(27:05):
getting married. They went state by state, educating people, sharing
stories of queer love, and building new allies. In a
little over a decade, Freedom to Marry had helped increase
American approval for gay marriage from forty percent to sixty percent.
One of the core elements of Evan's strategy was that
(27:26):
before getting to the Supreme Court, he wanted two have
already won gay marriage in a majority of states. This way,
by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it
would be a no brainer. But his journey to winning
those states was peppered with loss. In two thousand and eight,
California held a vote called Prop eight where they voted
(27:47):
against gay marriage. This was a massive loss for the movement.
If a liberal state like California couldn't get on board
with gay marriage, it could be a huge roadblock to
nationwide victory. So two thousand and eight happens, and you
lose one of the biggest liberal states, California. What was
(28:09):
that like for you? Like such a huge loss?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Well, the story of how we won marriage sprawls over
several decades, so the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the
two thousands. There are many, many battles and ups and
downs and losses and defeats. So when California came along,
many many people experienced that as the biggest blow, as
the biggest loss.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
By then, I'd already gone.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Through many of these losses and had had to figure
out a way to keep it going through the losses.
So I by that point I actually was explaining to
people that this is part of what I called the
scary work of winning. And the lessons from the scary
work of winning include the lesson that you can't always win.
(28:58):
You are going to lose battle. The question is how
do you engage those losses so as to at least
lose forward, how do you turn that loss and what
you got out of that loss into the gain that,
even if not enough to win in that particular moment,
gives you what you need for the next round and
the next round, following your strategy to your goal. And
(29:20):
so two thousand and eight was experienced as a terrible cruel,
difficult blow when we lost California, and it was a terrible, unfair,
cruel blow and very harmful to individual couples. And at
the same time, in two thousand and nine, we went
on to our winning this year, ever, taking what we
had lost, the lessons, the momentum, the awakened consciousness, the
(29:44):
new determination on the part of many who were shocked
by that loss into finally taking action, and we turned
that into the next battle, on the next battle, on
the next battle, and that's how we won. So I
didn't experience it as the biggest loss. I experienced it
as a painful loss that was also a galvani that
took us.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
To a whole other level.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, and wins trump losses. I like the tell us about.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So in my speech that I gave at another dark
moment where we lost thirteen ballot measures in one year,
and Bush got elected, and we were blamed for it.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And this was in writing about the year two thousand.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
And four, I said, any year in which we lose
thirteen ballot measures, painful and ugly as it is, and
see somebody like Bush, an opponent, get elected to the
White House, terrible as that is. If in that same
year you've also won marriage in a state like Massachusetts,
as we had, and couples have begun getting married for
(30:40):
the first time, as they did in Massachusetts in two
thousand and four, that's a winning year because the power
of the win, the power of those couples getting married,
and the stories of their love and the images that
we can put in front of people in open hearts
and minds, the win will trump the losses, you know,
flashing forward to the end of our story here, when
(31:01):
we won. By the time we won, after having lost
and lost and lost and lost and lost and lost
and lost over decades, we began winning and then winning,
winning and losing, then winning, winning, winning, losing, losing, winning, winning, winning, wing,
and by the end we won nearly one hundred court rulings,
having lost almost all the early ones as a prelude
(31:22):
to going to the Supreme Court and winning in twenty fifteen,
and the freedom to marry struggle important as it was
to win marriage, even more important is that it stands
as proof and as a model for how to make
the world better, proof that you can do it, proof
that we can change things even when they look scary
and bad.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
So in the midst of all of this, even though
you've mentioned you weren't driven by your own personal desire
to get married, you do end up meeting the love
of your life and you get married. Correct, But what
was it like actually experiencing the thing that you were
fighting for.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yes, by the time I met my.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Now husband Chung, freedom to marry was underway, and we
clicked immediately from.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
The day we met.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
We were pretty much seeing each other steadily from that
point on. And even though I'd always written and argued
and preached about the power of love and that love
is what this is about, now I was in the
position of having it for myself and seeing its wondrous
power and its effect. And the day we got married,
when we actually got married, which was almost ten years
(32:31):
after meeting, I could experience the power of the wedding
and the whole getting ready to get married and inviting
people your wedding and talking with people about your wedding
and what are you going to wear to your wedding
and who's coming to your wedding and all of that.
Even though I knew it intellectually and had talked about
it and written about it for years now, I experienced it,
and the glow of that day still stays with me
(32:52):
to this day, more than ten years later.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Now take me to the moment where you actually win.
So it's twenty fifteen and you get this news that
gay marriage is now the law of the land, thirty
two years in the making for you. What was that
first private moment like for you when it really all
(33:19):
hit you and you're married at this point?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Oh, yes, I'm married. I have a wonderful team. The
Freedom to Marry campaign is rocking, and we win. And
this was June twenty sixth, twenty fifteen. So we're gathered
around the table in the in the conference room, and
we're all looking at our devices and clicking and pushing,
and most of my staff is now at this point
(33:43):
younger than I am, but nevertheless, I, the old guy
in the room, was the one who actually saw it first,
and I read that to the group, and then as
soon as I read it, I was a little nervous
because you know, people are going to take it seriously
when I say it, and I wanted to be sure
it was right. But then everybody started seeing saying that
we had won, so of course we cheered. We had
remembered because it was now the eighth day that we
had gathered and done this to have champagne, So we
(34:05):
quickly toasted champagne, and then we all ran to our
battle stations to do the rest of the work we
needed to do that day, to push out the victory,
to explain it. And my job, as the only actual
attorney at Freedom to Marry, was to go back and
actually read the decision.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So I go back to my office.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
And I'm reading the decision on my desktop and I
started to cry.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And I surprised.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Myself by starting to cry, because, as I've said too
many times, it really wasn't the personal emotion that was
driving me. And at first I thought that I was
crying because it actually was the paper I wrote in
nineteen eighty three. It was like, exactly what we said
was the right answer, and so I thought that was
what was moving me, why I was crying, and it
(34:51):
really wasn't actually until like two days later when that
weekend happened to be. It was June twenty sixth, so
it was Friday in twenty fifteen, and was Gay Pride,
so it was, as you can imagine, this immense eruption
of joy, celebration and people. I realized that part of
the reason I was crying was a sense.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Of relief that I had always believed we would win.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
I'd always communicated that I believe we would win over
many many, many many years, repetitively conveyed it, and yet
to now realize that I didn't have to keep doing it,
that we didn't have to find hope again, and in
the face.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Of a loss, fight fight, fight, fight and.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Pull back on the scary work of winning and all
that kind of stuff, that we actually had won. And
that then made me think, Wow, I have really been
hardened in this work over all these decades that it
didn't even occur to me that I might feel relief
like any other human being would until two days later.
(36:01):
And what that then illustrated was this is work. It
is difficult, it is hard, and even for people like
me who always seemed confident and hopeful and determined and
who were grateful to be in this role. And I
wouldn't trade any of it. It was a privilege to
be part of something meaningful and important, but it does
(36:21):
require you to gird yourself for that and to rise
to your moment.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I love that, and you know you you have championed
probably the biggest civil rights issue victory of a generation.
What do you think is the sort of next frontier
of LGBTQ fights.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
So on the day we won June twenty six, twenty fifteen,
I was actually, on that day finally able to get
the New York Times to agree to run an op
ed that I'd written, And my op ed was all about,
as you just put it, what's next. And the only
part of that that I don't like is the word next,
because there really wasn't actually a next. We were always
(37:06):
working on many things. It was never the case that
we only worked on marriage. We were always working on
youth and seniors and trans and employment and the military.
So next kind of makes it sound like you do
one thing and everybody agrees on that thing, and then
you go to the next and that's.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Not how it works. All we're all worrying on all
these things.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
But some things are really effective, and some things are
really galvanizing, and some things can bring along other wins.
If and this is what my OpEd was about, we
now harness what we've won to the next work and
the next work and the next work. And harnessing is
important because there's a tendency on the part of some
people to think, Okay, we won that check, put it
(37:50):
on a shelf, it's history, whereas it actually winning something
as powerful as marriage can be the gift that keeps
on giving. It can continues to be a changer of
hearts and minds. So the many, many organizations and businesses
and labor unions and ultimately politicians and academics and others
(38:11):
who we brought along on marriage are now there for
us as we fight to defend trans people or work
to assure that every gay young person is growing up
in a healthy environment. We have so much to keep
working with if we build on what we've done and
harness what we've done, rather than think we're just careering
from one thing to another, as if nothing that ever
(38:33):
happened before made any difference or wasn't a lot of work.
That is, as I said, the gift that keeps on giving,
so quote unquote, what's next. What's next is pushing back
against the toxic and ugly attacks that we're seeing on
trans people, on gay people, the efforts to roll back
the gains that we won, which are connected to even
(38:54):
deeper efforts to roll back even bigger gains for women,
for racial equality.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
This is not the first.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Time this has happened, but we now have the proof
that we can change it. And there will be losses
and ugliness and cruelty, but there is also always the
power of change, and that's what we have shown.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So last part of the interview. In one word or
one sentence, what do these words mean? What is justice?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Justice is that everybody be treated in a way that
is right and kind and equal.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Freedom.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Freedom is fulfillment. Freedom is the ability to pursue your
dreams in a world respectful of others, and live up
to your full potential and your dream.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And what is love. Love is.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The sustaining, giving and getting that tells you you're not
alone in this world, old that there are things that
are bigger than you, and that you are cherished by
others as well.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
to tell your story, email us at butt we Loved
at gmail dot com, or send us a message on
Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a
production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
(40:37):
We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
are Shehino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard, and Katrina Normal. Fact
checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone special
thanks to Jay Bronson and rockel Ellis. If you love
(41:00):
to this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Because of love. It's because of.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Who we love that people think we're loving in the
wrong way. So what's the central language, what's the central
structure of love in this society? And of course that
central structure and central language is marriage. So I thought
if we could claim that structure, if we could claim
(00:35):
that language as ours, that would change how non gay
people understood who gay people are and would build support
not only for us to have marriage, which is important
in its own right, but to have everything.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
(01:14):
In this episode, we'll learn about Evan Wolfson, otherwise known
as Mister Marriage, the man who spent thirty two years
fighting to win gay marriage in America. From iHeart Podcasts.
I'm joining in Solvice and this is What We Loved.
(01:54):
I've been thinking a lot about my own memories around
marriage growing up. I grew up Athletic an Indian, and
marriage is sacred in both of those cultures. Even though
I didn't know I was gay when I was a kid,
I just knew there was something about marriage that didn't
fit me. I remember attending my cousin's wedding when I
(02:14):
was eleven years old. She looked beautiful in this all
white gown that had a long train, But even then
I knew that I would never be the groom waiting
for his bride at the altar. I was mostly enamored
by the pearls and the last detail in my cousin's gown.
Looking back, I now realize I never thought i'd get
(02:36):
married because marriage wasn't something I was allowed to aspire to.
My next guest, Evan Wolfson, was one of the people
that changed that for me and for so many other
queer Americans. Part of the reason for this podcast is
to introduce us to the queer heroes that pioneered and
(02:57):
fought for our rights. Evan is one of the architects
of gay marriage in America. He spent thirty two years
working to make gay marriage the law of the land.
He started working on the legal argument in the eighties,
and in two thousand and three he founded an organization
called Freedom to Marry. It was responsible not just for
(03:18):
creating the legal road mop but also for opening America's
mind to the idea of gay people getting married. And yet,
even though he's nicknamed Mister Marriage, it was amazing to
learn that, just like me, when he was a kid,
he didn't think he'd get married either.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
One of the things I actually mentioned in my book
was I relate the story of a childhood memory I have,
and it was probably from when I was around ten
or eleven, and I was lying in bed in my parents'
bedroom with my mom, and we were watching TV and
chatting and so on, and I turned to my mom
and I can remember doing this kind of out of
the blue to her and saying, I don't think I'll
(04:04):
ever get married.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Her reaction, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And I think what I meant at the time, without
even fully knowing it or understanding it, was that the
images that were being presented to kids like me of
what marriage was somehow just didn't fit. And I do
again have this very singular memory from that early age
of that conversation and of course, what it turned out
(04:28):
was kids like me, of course, should be able to
get married. It was the images that were being presented,
it was the language. It was the law that was wrong,
not us. And later on I found my way to
changing that.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And that's such a good segment. When was the first
time you knew something was different and you maybe thought
you felt intrigued by something gay?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So I think I always knew as a kid in
elementary school, I was aware of being different, but that
didn't necessarily have a finger on it until you know,
I got a little older, and I remember this episode
where I was walking to school, elementary school, and this
kid yelled at me, do you know what a fagot is?
(05:12):
And I responded to him, yes, a faggot is a
bundle of sticks, because I had read this book of
Japanese fairy tales which I remember, and it talked about
a fact carrying a fagot of sticks. But of course
I then found out what he meant by that taunt.
So from a very early age, and even before I
had a full understanding of what I was feeling or thinking,
(05:36):
I was aware of being different, and definitely in elementary
school I was aware of being attracted to boys. And
whether I had the word gay in mind or not
at that point, I don't know, but I remember there
was somehow this issue of I think it was Life
Magazine could have been looking at that point, and there
was this picture of two young guys sitting together, probably
(05:58):
with teenagers.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I would have been fifteen, sixteen, fourteen, I don't know exactly,
but it made such an impact on me. I wanted
to know those boys. I wanted to be with those boys.
The cover, well, it was if to the extent I
remember them. They were sitting next to each other, probably
one had his arm around the other, Their legs were,
(06:21):
you know, next to each other. They probably were wearing shorts.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A pre language awareness of an attraction and a desire
and an interest and an affinity to these you know,
guys I don't even know. And on the one hand,
it was innocent enough that it was lying on the
kitchen counter in Life magazine. But I was able to
find something that touched a chord in me even before
(06:48):
I was ready to start singing that song.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's so funny that you mentioned how that was one
of your first experiences with this little boy calling you
a fuggot or saying do you know what that is?
And I have the same experience that I felt like
for me, it was almost as though kids could smell
it on me. It's funny how we share a lot
(07:12):
of us share those experiences.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Absolutely, and this is why history actually is so relevant
because it does actually bring you the experiences and journeys
of previous generations. It's very personal and individual, so it's
not just about what the group has achieved in a
particular time or era. There's also the individual and it's
important to remember that even today.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
So when did you end up coming out? Was it
in college?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, so the answer is no. I went to college
from nineteen seventy four to nineteen seventy eight. I was
not openly gay. I really didn't do anything gay for.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
The most part.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I never wound up having sex with a guy at
that point I wanted to. I was kind of feeling
like I wish I knew what to do. And you
know that sounds kind of dumb, because there was a
gay bar on the edge of campus that people knew
and talked about. But I never had the courage or
sort of wherewithal to leave the coll in the dorm
(08:11):
room and go over there. So during college I just
never found the pathway or the luck of being hit on, etc.
Or at least hit on hard enough that I fell
to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I just feel like in college hormones are raging, and
that's kind of the time where gay men. There's so
many stories of gay men that will go undercover or
hide their sort of sexuality but still have these gay experiences.
And you weren't sort of desperate to have that.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, I wasn't desperate to have it, I guess, or
at least not desperate enough.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Maybe I'm projected.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
No, No, I think it's a very fair comment. I
guess you could say I was sexually motivated enough that
I did have girlfriends in Oh wow, so you were
having sex with women. I did have sex with women
in college. Yes, two women, and one remains a very
very close friend.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And at the time, you know, sex is sex.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It was, it worked, it was I enjoyed it, but
it wasn't really who I was and what I wanted.
And once I actually did figure out my way to
having gay sex and having gay relationships, I haven't gone back.
And of course, ironically I found it in a place
that people would think would be much much more difficult
(09:30):
than college or whatever. It was in the Peace Corps
in West Africa in Togo.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
After graduating college, I've enjoyed the Peace Corps and travel
to Africa for two years. It was there that he
had his first major revelation that planted the seeds of
gay marriage in his mind.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I was in the small village about a half
hour off the nearest paved road, so you know, you
had to ride on a dirt road for about thirty
minutes to get to the nearest paved road and the
other bigger market village to then ride to the nearest
quote so remote and yeah remote. And I was there
for two years. So in the middle of this village,
(10:09):
in the middle of you quote unquote nowhere is where
I first began having sex, wow, and having not really
relationships but certainly friendships.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And was it illegal there?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It was illegal.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I remember one day going to the school yard where
I was teaching, and there was a notice posted on
the bulletin board that stated the anti gay, anti so
called asodomy law and you know, warning basically that homosexualized
is illegal, And of course it terrified me. Not enough
(10:44):
to stop, but it did give me one of many,
you know, sleepless nights where I was afraid something I
was doing would catch the eyes of the village. But
I never had any actual bad incident, but I do
remember that thing appearing on the bulletin board and it
being very terrifying.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
So it was illegal to have sex.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
What was the consequence, like, go to jailism?
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah it was, I don't remember. It was five years,
ten years, whatever, it.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Was five or ten years. Oh yeah, Wow, I'm curious
to know what was queer life like in this remote
village in the eighties, yeah, or in the late seventies.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah, I was there from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, there was no queer life as far as I knew,
but there were friendships, and in those friendships I was
eventually able to find some guys who I would have
sex with. And what I discovered and this was one
of the major epiphanies of my young life at this
point that later set the stage for my writing my
(11:47):
thesis on marriage and launched my career. But at the
time it was just an observation. I discovered that many
of the guys I was having sex with were not gay.
I mean they probably They were happy to do it.
They were curious. It was, you know, sex, so why not,
they liked me, whatever the mix of motives on there,
(12:08):
and we did it and it could be great, it
could be fun, or it could be you know eh.
But it just really wasn't for them in the same
way that it definitely was for me. But some of
the guys that I stumbled into this opportunity to have
sex with were probably gay. I mean I thought they
were actually more like me. And yet they lived in
(12:31):
a society where the images, the law, as you and
I discussed, and even the language just did not allow
for a vision of a life that would be true
to who they are. So that really taught me something important,
which is that who you are is profoundly affected by
(12:52):
the structures, the opportunities, the law, and even the language
that your society gives you, even on something as central
to who you are as your sexual and romantic attractions.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
In other words, if you aren't able to see or
even know that there's the possibility to be out and
to be proud, you don't even think that's who you are.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You don't know that there is a quote category of
gay people. You don't know that there's a kind of
life that can be led this way as opposed to
that way. It's just a given or a natural that
there's only this and there's only that, and you have
to find a way to break out of that in
order to envision a different kind of life for yourself.
And then you have to break out of the law
(13:37):
and the social forces in order to then be free
to act on that. And that's the work of my activism,
and that's the work of each one of us in
our own personal lives, even if you don't think of
it as activism. You have to find a way to
figure out who you are, what you want, and how
you can make it happen for yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
It's nineteen eighty and Evan is back in the US
from the Peace Corps. He's officially out and enrolled as
a law student at Harvard. For his Harvard thesis, he
wrote about why gay marriage was an important step on
the road to full equality. It's one of the earliest
formal arguments in modern history made for gay marriage. Evan's
thesis would later become America's roadmap to legalizing same sex marriage.
(14:39):
The history of gay marriage in America is actually pretty recent.
The first legal records of gay people trying to obtain
marriage licenses are from the nineteen seventies, after the Stonewall Riots.
But this movement toward progress was met with backlash. Later
that decade, states across a Maria began enacting bans against
(15:02):
gay marriage. The country would go on to adopt an
ultra conservative attitude for the next three decades. This helped
elect Ronald Reagan, a staunch conservative, to the White House.
His campaign slogan make America Great Again. By the eighties,
gay marriage wasn't even a priority for most gay rights groups.
(15:23):
Gay sex was still illegal in multiple states, and the
AIDS crisis was just starting to creep up. This was
the backdrop to Evan writing his thesis on gay marriage
despite the opposition, though he had a vision. So you
come back to the US and you go to Harvard
Law School and you're writing your thesis on gay marriage.
(15:47):
What sort of sparked your interests in gay marriage at
the time.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
So at the time I knew I wanted to write
about how to make the world better.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
For gay people.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And you're out at this point.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
By this point law school, I come back from my
I've now had sex, I now know what I want,
and so I start this process of coming out to classmates,
to casual friends, and I come out to my family.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
And so I decide as part of.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
That that I want to write about how we can
change the world, how we can make the world better
for gay people. I drew first on that Peace Corps
experience of who you are being shaped by the forces
and the language around you. And then I also drew
on another important formative experience that happened while I was
in law school. So i'd come back from the Peace Corps,
I was obviously making friends and finding sex and finding boyfriends,
(16:37):
trying to build.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
A whole life.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And then I also squeeze in a little law school
during all of that. And one day I read in
the New York Times book review about this groundbreaking new
book called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality written by a
guy named John Boswell, a professor at Yale, that had
come out, and I immediately knew I had to go
out and get it and did. It was this massive
(17:00):
telling of history. It was basically telling of the first
several thousand years of Western history, tracing from Biblical times
to essentially the Renaissance, the way in which homosexuality had
been treated in different societies, and the forces and factors
that explained the different ways in which different societies had
(17:21):
encountered gay people and treated gay people and understood homosexuality.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
And this book changed my life.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
This is the book that changed my life, because what
it showed me was that things had not always been
the way they were now in twentieth century America, in
you know, nineteen eighties, in the circumstances and ways in
which gay people like me were treated in which homosexuality
was disdained. That yes, there had been terrible periods in
(17:50):
which that had been the case in other societies, But
there also had been many societies that extolled same sex
love or the thought of it is just perfectly natural
and not even that important, you know, a distinction. And
that gave me this insight that if things had once
been different, they could be different again.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
We could change this.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And so, drawing on that book and drawing on this
experience in the Peace Corps, I thought to myself, Okay,
so I want to write about why gay people are
oppressed why is it bad today unlike all these other societies,
and what.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Can we change and how can we change it?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And what I concluded in thinking about it was the
reason gay people are discriminated against and disdained is because
of love. It's because of who we love that people
think we're loving in the wrong way, we're choosing to love.
And so then I asked myself, Okay, so what's the
central language, what's the central structure of love in this
(18:48):
society and indeed in almost every other society that's ever existent,
And of course that central structure and central language is marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Marriage.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
So I thought, if we.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Could claim that structure, if we could claim that language
as ours, it would change how non gay people understood
who gay people are, and would build support not only
for us to have marriage, which is important in its
own right, but to have everything, to just have full
opportunity and inclusion and dignity and respect and freedom in
(19:22):
our society. And so that led me to write about marriage.
And then the very end of the paper, after I
went through all kinds of history and popular culture and
talked about the movies and had a whole chapter on
feminism and sex roles, etc.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
At the end, I threw in a.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Little bit of law and talked about here's the legal
pathway that the courts could follow. And I think it
was because this paper was so sprawling and so multidisciplinary
that my professor had no idea what to make of
this paper, and it only got to be. It got
to be because the law was almost and afterthought, it
(20:00):
was like the last part, although flash forward thirty two
years later, the legal roadmap that the Supreme Court followed
in our marriage victory was very much the legal argument
that I made in my paper. And what that showed
was that the paper had its finger on something important,
which was it wasn't just about the legal argument. It
(20:20):
was about getting decision makers, including the public, to want
to get to the right answer, to be able to understand,
to be able to see the answer.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It's interesting because you write this thesis about gay marriage
in the early eighties, but they're actually still sodomy laws
on the books, so it's illegal too for people that
don't know what's oto me is it's gay sex pretty
much so in some states, while you're talking about gay marriage,
there are some states where it's actually I legal to
(20:50):
have sex at the time.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So yeah, I mean as a young attorney when I
began volunteering for Lambda Legal, one of the important gay
legal rights groups and one of the few that existed
at the time. I'm in the early eighties, when I
began volunteering and then ultimately becoming a volunteer attorney and
then later going.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
To work there.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I wrote the brief, the quote unquote gay brief in
the Supreme Court case Bowers versus Hardwick, which was a
case in which we challenged the so called sodomy laws.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Tell me what happened in that yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So essentially, in that case, the police burst into a
guy named Michael Hardwick's bedroom, found him there with another
guy having oral sex. This was in Georgia, and arrested him.
And when news of that arrest came to this small
little band of activists, including me, we seized on this
(21:42):
as an opportunity to take his case to the Supreme
Court to try to strike down the so called sodomy's laws,
these laws that made it illegal to have same sex
sexual intimacy, and we argued that that was a violation
of his personal freedom and dignity, the freedom we all
as Americans have to intimate association to be able to
make our own decisions about whom we have sex with,
(22:05):
and equality being treated equally, that if it wasn't illegal
for others, it shouldn't be prescribed by the state against
gay people. And we fought that case all the way
up to the Supreme Court, and on June thirtieth, nineteen
eighty six, we lost WOW five to four. And I
still remember getting that phone call from one of my
dear friends and spending about two or three days wondering
(22:26):
if I could even stay a lawyer. Did I really
even believe.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It was a big loss.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It was a huge loss, It was an epic loss,
and I really wondered whether I could stay in the system,
whether I believed in change. And I spent about two
or three days until I finally decided that the reason
this happened is not enough people know who gay people are,
and that if more of us came out and told
our stories and had conversations with them and pushed them
(22:51):
to think about their values, that we could change it.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
We could fix it.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
And so I went out that day to the Oscar
Wild Bookstore, which.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Existed then in the West Village.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
And bought a little pink triangle pin and put it
on and said I will not take this off until
we overturn Hardwick. And I wore it for the next
seventeen years until we succeeded. And I was on Anderson
Cooper's show when we got the news of the win,
(23:20):
and while on the show talking about what it meant
and how then we're now going to move forward and
win the freedom to marry, which at the time seemed
uncertain to many people. This was two thousand and three.
I took off my pink triangle pin and put on
a Freedom to Marry pin and said, Okay, now I'm
going to wear this until we win the freedom to marry,
which I then wore for the next twelve.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Years or so.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
You have a funny story about Michael hardwith too right,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Know funny it is, yeah, so yeah, gee, we'll go
with that. So we all went to have breakfast in
the Supreme Court cafeteria on the March Day in nineteen
eighty six when we argued the Hardware case. And so
we're sitting there having breakfast and the team is talking
and I happened to look up and saw this drop
(24:08):
dead gorgeous guy walk into the cafeteria. So you know,
while I was still doing my lawyer thing, I was
actually really looking at this very cute guy who came in,
who then proceeded to come over to our table and
introduce himself. And it was Michael Hardwood. And so that
was my meeting of the plaintiff. And we sat and
chatted and so and we immediately hit it off. And
(24:30):
so we went into the Supreme Court together, sat together
in the argument.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Whenever the Supreme Court would ask a hostile.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Or difficult question, we would, you know, like squeeze each
other's knee or like look at each other with this
total energy and chemistry flowing between us. Afterwards, we all
went out to lunch and we're all talking about how
did we think it go?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
We all thought we were gonna win.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
And meanwhile Michael and I were looking at each other,
looking at you, looking, and finally had the chemical idea
of let's get out of here. And so we went out
and went for a walk. And it was this gorgeous
March day in nineteen eighty six. The cherry trees were out,
my first time ever seeing them. The whole city was
beautiful and gorgeous, and so we strolled and strolled and
strolled throughout Washington under the cherry trees, stopped in front
(25:15):
of the White House, kissed defiantly, and spent the day together.
I'd later discovered amongst my friends it was this total
scandal because they were like shocked that, you know, these
two gay guys, despite everything, found time to go and
get to the core of what it was all about
in even in the midst of this historic day.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
You know, kind of going back to your journey, Evan,
by the nineties, you're really starting to get into the
gay marriage court cases. But was it a personal dream
of yours by this point to get married?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yes, I mean I always wanted to, if not get married,
at least I always wanted to fall in love and
have a partner. And I spent many, many, many of
my early years as an activist and as the most
prominent activist, pushing and arguing and fighting for the freedom
to marry. Kind of whinily single?
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Were you lonely?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yes, sure I was lonely. You know, I was also
dating and trying and cruising and so on. But yes,
I very much wanted to have a boyfriend. So I
would sometimes joke with people that when they would point
out how ironic it was that I'm single, you know,
even though I'm mister marriage, and I would say I'm
closer to winning marriage for gay people than i'm and
(26:30):
than I am to having a boyfriend myself.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Evan Wilson had one of the biggest civil rights victories
in American history in twenty fifteen. He and his organization,
Freedom to Marry, worked to push the issue of gay
marriage all the way to the Supreme Court, and they won.
Freedom to Marry was essentially a campaign aimed at opening
the hearts of Americans to the idea of gay people
(27:05):
getting married. They went state by state, educating people, sharing
stories of queer love, and building new allies. In a
little over a decade, Freedom to Marry had helped increase
American approval for gay marriage from forty percent to sixty percent.
One of the core elements of Evan's strategy was that
(27:26):
before getting to the Supreme Court, he wanted two have
already won gay marriage in a majority of states. This way,
by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it
would be a no brainer. But his journey to winning
those states was peppered with loss. In two thousand and eight,
California held a vote called Prop eight where they voted
(27:47):
against gay marriage. This was a massive loss for the movement.
If a liberal state like California couldn't get on board
with gay marriage, it could be a huge roadblock to
nationwide victory. So two thousand and eight happens, and you
lose one of the biggest liberal states, California. What was
(28:09):
that like for you? Like such a huge loss?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Well, the story of how we won marriage sprawls over
several decades, so the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the
two thousands. There are many, many battles and ups and
downs and losses and defeats. So when California came along,
many many people experienced that as the biggest blow, as
the biggest loss.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
By then, I'd already gone.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Through many of these losses and had had to figure
out a way to keep it going through the losses.
So I by that point I actually was explaining to
people that this is part of what I called the
scary work of winning. And the lessons from the scary
work of winning include the lesson that you can't always win.
(28:58):
You are going to lose battle. The question is how
do you engage those losses so as to at least
lose forward, how do you turn that loss and what
you got out of that loss into the gain that,
even if not enough to win in that particular moment,
gives you what you need for the next round and
the next round, following your strategy to your goal. And
(29:20):
so two thousand and eight was experienced as a terrible cruel,
difficult blow when we lost California, and it was a terrible, unfair,
cruel blow and very harmful to individual couples. And at
the same time, in two thousand and nine, we went
on to our winning this year, ever, taking what we
had lost, the lessons, the momentum, the awakened consciousness, the
(29:44):
new determination on the part of many who were shocked
by that loss into finally taking action, and we turned
that into the next battle, on the next battle, on
the next battle, and that's how we won. So I
didn't experience it as the biggest loss. I experienced it
as a painful loss that was also a galvani that
took us.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
To a whole other level.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, and wins trump losses. I like the tell us about.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So in my speech that I gave at another dark
moment where we lost thirteen ballot measures in one year,
and Bush got elected, and we were blamed for it.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And this was in writing about the year two thousand.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
And four, I said, any year in which we lose
thirteen ballot measures, painful and ugly as it is, and
see somebody like Bush, an opponent, get elected to the
White House, terrible as that is. If in that same
year you've also won marriage in a state like Massachusetts,
as we had, and couples have begun getting married for
(30:40):
the first time, as they did in Massachusetts in two
thousand and four, that's a winning year because the power
of the win, the power of those couples getting married,
and the stories of their love and the images that
we can put in front of people in open hearts
and minds, the win will trump the losses, you know,
flashing forward to the end of our story here, when
(31:01):
we won. By the time we won, after having lost
and lost and lost and lost and lost and lost
and lost over decades, we began winning and then winning,
winning and losing, then winning, winning, winning, losing, losing, winning, winning, winning, wing,
and by the end we won nearly one hundred court rulings,
having lost almost all the early ones as a prelude
(31:22):
to going to the Supreme Court and winning in twenty fifteen,
and the freedom to marry struggle important as it was
to win marriage, even more important is that it stands
as proof and as a model for how to make
the world better, proof that you can do it, proof
that we can change things even when they look scary
and bad.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
So in the midst of all of this, even though
you've mentioned you weren't driven by your own personal desire
to get married, you do end up meeting the love
of your life and you get married. Correct, But what
was it like actually experiencing the thing that you were
fighting for.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yes, by the time I met my.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Now husband Chung, freedom to marry was underway, and we
clicked immediately from.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
The day we met.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
We were pretty much seeing each other steadily from that
point on. And even though I'd always written and argued
and preached about the power of love and that love
is what this is about, now I was in the
position of having it for myself and seeing its wondrous
power and its effect. And the day we got married,
when we actually got married, which was almost ten years
(32:31):
after meeting, I could experience the power of the wedding
and the whole getting ready to get married and inviting
people your wedding and talking with people about your wedding
and what are you going to wear to your wedding
and who's coming to your wedding and all of that.
Even though I knew it intellectually and had talked about
it and written about it for years now, I experienced it,
and the glow of that day still stays with me
(32:52):
to this day, more than ten years later.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Now take me to the moment where you actually win.
So it's twenty fifteen and you get this news that
gay marriage is now the law of the land, thirty
two years in the making for you. What was that
first private moment like for you when it really all
(33:19):
hit you and you're married at this point?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Oh, yes, I'm married. I have a wonderful team. The
Freedom to Marry campaign is rocking, and we win. And
this was June twenty sixth, twenty fifteen. So we're gathered
around the table in the in the conference room, and
we're all looking at our devices and clicking and pushing,
and most of my staff is now at this point
(33:43):
younger than I am, but nevertheless, I, the old guy
in the room, was the one who actually saw it first,
and I read that to the group, and then as
soon as I read it, I was a little nervous
because you know, people are going to take it seriously
when I say it, and I wanted to be sure
it was right. But then everybody started seeing saying that
we had won, so of course we cheered. We had
remembered because it was now the eighth day that we
had gathered and done this to have champagne, So we
(34:05):
quickly toasted champagne, and then we all ran to our
battle stations to do the rest of the work we
needed to do that day, to push out the victory,
to explain it. And my job, as the only actual
attorney at Freedom to Marry, was to go back and
actually read the decision.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So I go back to my office.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
And I'm reading the decision on my desktop and I
started to cry.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And I surprised.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Myself by starting to cry, because, as I've said too
many times, it really wasn't the personal emotion that was
driving me. And at first I thought that I was
crying because it actually was the paper I wrote in
nineteen eighty three. It was like, exactly what we said
was the right answer, and so I thought that was
what was moving me, why I was crying, and it
(34:51):
really wasn't actually until like two days later when that
weekend happened to be. It was June twenty sixth, so
it was Friday in twenty fifteen, and was Gay Pride,
so it was, as you can imagine, this immense eruption
of joy, celebration and people. I realized that part of
the reason I was crying was a sense.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Of relief that I had always believed we would win.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
I'd always communicated that I believe we would win over
many many, many many years, repetitively conveyed it, and yet
to now realize that I didn't have to keep doing it,
that we didn't have to find hope again, and in
the face.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Of a loss, fight fight, fight, fight and.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Pull back on the scary work of winning and all
that kind of stuff, that we actually had won. And
that then made me think, Wow, I have really been
hardened in this work over all these decades that it
didn't even occur to me that I might feel relief
like any other human being would until two days later.
(36:01):
And what that then illustrated was this is work. It
is difficult, it is hard, and even for people like
me who always seemed confident and hopeful and determined and
who were grateful to be in this role. And I
wouldn't trade any of it. It was a privilege to
be part of something meaningful and important, but it does
(36:21):
require you to gird yourself for that and to rise
to your moment.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
I love that, and you know you you have championed
probably the biggest civil rights issue victory of a generation.
What do you think is the sort of next frontier
of LGBTQ fights.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
So on the day we won June twenty six, twenty fifteen,
I was actually, on that day finally able to get
the New York Times to agree to run an op
ed that I'd written, And my op ed was all about,
as you just put it, what's next. And the only
part of that that I don't like is the word next,
because there really wasn't actually a next. We were always
(37:06):
working on many things. It was never the case that
we only worked on marriage. We were always working on
youth and seniors and trans and employment and the military.
So next kind of makes it sound like you do
one thing and everybody agrees on that thing, and then
you go to the next and that's.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Not how it works. All we're all worrying on all
these things.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
But some things are really effective, and some things are
really galvanizing, and some things can bring along other wins.
If and this is what my OpEd was about, we
now harness what we've won to the next work and
the next work and the next work. And harnessing is
important because there's a tendency on the part of some
people to think, Okay, we won that check, put it
(37:50):
on a shelf, it's history, whereas it actually winning something
as powerful as marriage can be the gift that keeps
on giving. It can continues to be a changer of
hearts and minds. So the many, many organizations and businesses
and labor unions and ultimately politicians and academics and others
(38:11):
who we brought along on marriage are now there for
us as we fight to defend trans people or work
to assure that every gay young person is growing up
in a healthy environment. We have so much to keep
working with if we build on what we've done and
harness what we've done, rather than think we're just careering
from one thing to another, as if nothing that ever
(38:33):
happened before made any difference or wasn't a lot of work.
That is, as I said, the gift that keeps on giving,
so quote unquote, what's next. What's next is pushing back
against the toxic and ugly attacks that we're seeing on
trans people, on gay people, the efforts to roll back
the gains that we won, which are connected to even
(38:54):
deeper efforts to roll back even bigger gains for women,
for racial equality.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
This is not the first.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Time this has happened, but we now have the proof
that we can change it. And there will be losses
and ugliness and cruelty, but there is also always the
power of change, and that's what we have shown.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So last part of the interview. In one word or
one sentence, what do these words mean? What is justice?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Justice is that everybody be treated in a way that
is right and kind and equal.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Freedom.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Freedom is fulfillment. Freedom is the ability to pursue your
dreams in a world respectful of others, and live up
to your full potential and your dream.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And what is love. Love is.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The sustaining, giving and getting that tells you you're not
alone in this world, old that there are things that
are bigger than you, and that you are cherished by
others as well.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
to tell your story, email us at butt we Loved
at gmail dot com, or send us a message on
Instagram or TikTok at butt we Loved. We are a
production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
(40:37):
We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
are Shehino Zaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Executive producers are Me, Maya Howard, and Katrina Normal. Fact
checking by Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Bone special
thanks to Jay Bronson and rockel Ellis. If you love
(41:00):
to this episode, leave us a rating and follow us
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you next week.
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