The ‘Godfather of Gay Marriage’ Takes on DOMA
The Daily Beast’s Lois Romano has a piece up about the “father of the gay marriage movement,” Evan Wolfson, who is testifying before Congress today in support of a repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Wolfson, whose Harvard Law School thesis thirty years ago anticipated the cultural and moral arguments supporting gay marriage today, argued that marriage was a civil right guaranteed to gays and straights alike under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, and he “advocated embracing the ‘vocabulary’ of marriage” at a time when many gay activists worried about demanding too much too quickly and winding up with nothing. “He really understood the marriage issue before anyone else and he educated so many of us,” David Mixner, a noted activist and friend, tells Romano. “If you fight for marriage, then you will get the increments along the way as well.” Or, as Wolfson puts it, “Our job is to advocate for what we truly deserve—not just for what we think is doable. We have 44 states to go.”
• ‘The Godfather of Gay Marriage’ [Lois Romano, The Daily Beast]