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The Work of Marriage Equality Now: Successes in 2007 and How We Can Continue to Win
Marriage Equality Now: Building on 2007's Successes, Will 2008 Be the Year of Change and the Second State?
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By Evan Wolfson | Contact
"One of the 100 most influential people in the world." - Time Magazine
Evan Wolfson is Executive Director of Freedom to Marry, the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide.
Before founding Freedom to Marry, Evan served as marriage project director for Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, was co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case, and participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases.
Citing his national leadership on marriage equality and his appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the National Law Journal in 2000 named Evan one of "the 100 most influential lawyers in America."
In 2004, Evan was named one of the "Time 100," Time magazine's list of "the 100 most influential people in the world."
Evan Wolfson's first book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, was published by Simon & Schuster in July 2004 and was re-released in paperback with a new forward in June 2005.
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In 2007, state legislatures considered a record number of marriage laws (11), while courts continued to hear cases brought by couples challenging their unfair exclusion from marriage. Bills to create civil union or partnership as interim steps advanced in diverse states – products of the work to win marriage itself.
By year's end, couples stood before the high courts of three states seeking marriage, legislatures in two states enacted measures just short of marriage, the California legislature and one chamber in New York voted for the freedom to marry, and public opinion continued to move in the direction of embracing marriage equality (as have the policy positions of many leading presidential candidates, who have called for undoing the federal anti marriage law passed just a decade before).
In 2007 the people with the best first-hand lived experience of marriage equality decided overwhelmingly to keep it, in a dramatic 3/4's majority vote by the Massachusetts legislature.
The marriage conversation, and even state Supreme Court stumbles, moved the Washington legislature to enact a "first steps" partnership bill, and spurred governors and legislative leaders to pledge support for the freedom to marry in states such as New Jersey and Maryland. Likewise, introduction of marriage laws vastly upped the ante and helped civil union progress in New Hampshire, Illinois, and other states, while underscoring that marriage itself remains the frame and the goal, as well as the engine of advance.
After 15 years or so of the marriage debate, it remains true that the states that make the most gains for same sex couples (and, incidentally, for unmarried different-sex couples) are those where advocates fight hardest for, and talk most about, the freedom to marry. What's more, in 2007 the talk of marriage continued to propel advances on other fronts of importance, including passage of state and local non-discrimination measures, enactment of parenting and gender identity protections, and successes for openly gay and pro-gay elected officials.
“Do all you can, no matter what, to get people to think on your reform, and then, if the reform is good, it will come about in due season."—Feminist Pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Stanton knew the importance of perseverance – and sure enough, 2007 fell just short of yielding the crucial second marriage state that will further advance people's growing acceptance of the need to end exclusion. But one lesson of Massachusetts is that when we give people the chance to see marriage equality for real, not just as a scary hypothetical, many embrace it as a good while others remember that they don't care that much and can live with it.
2007 demonstrated anew the power of "doing all you can, no matter what" to encourage even the reluctant to push past their discomfort. Because his co-workers, friends, and family determined not to write him off, a Republican mayor and former police chief reversed himself on whether civil unions are "good enough" and added San Diego to the scores of cities, religious and civil rights organizations, and allies who now stand alongside same sex couples before the California Supreme Court, urging it to strike down marriage discrimination in 2008.
Freedom to Marry was founded on a belief in Dr. King's call to integrate all the "methodologies of social change": electoral, legislative, litigation, education, and enlistment of as many as possible, gay and non-gay, creating the space for decision-makers to rise and act. The imperatives of ending injustice, the opportunities to engage, and the urgency of the clocks ticking on cases and battles underway don't stop on the electoral calendar. Building on the successes in 2007, Freedom to Marry will continue as a catalyst, convener, and coach for the marriage movement.
In 1948, another election year, the California Supreme Court became the first court in the country to strike down race restrictions on who could marry whom. It is civil rights poetry, and an urgent call to action, that in the 60th anniversary year of that pivotal decision – deeply unpopular at the time but vindicated by history – the same court now will rule on same sex couples' claims to share in the freedom to marry.
Your support of Freedom to Marry and its partners and, even more important, your commitment to take personal action in 2008 help us summon others to the cause and work together to embolden decision-makers throughout the country to do right. In 2008, it is due season for the redeeming of our country, for justice for all families, and for that all-important second state.
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