Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfsonis an attorney and gay rights advocate. He is the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States. Wolfson, who many consider to be the father and leader of the same-sex marriage movement, authored the book Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, which Time Out New York magazine called, "Perhaps the most important gay-marriage primer ever written..." He was listed as one of Time magazine's 100...
affects african civil clear excluded fairness including latinos question rights tremendous vulnerable whom
They had a tremendous impact. Not just because they underscore that this is a civil rights question, but they're making it clear this is a question of fairness that affects real families, including Latinos and African Americans many of whom are the most vulnerable when discriminatorily excluded from marriage.
afraid ending exactly families gay helps hurts legal lesbian marriage people wing year
This is exactly what the right wing is afraid of. People have had a year of legal marriage in Massachusetts to see how ending marriage discrimination helps gay and lesbian families and hurts no one.
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The Constitution was never amended to take away rights from a group of Americans.
hands giving people
Marriage is also a social statement, preeminently describing and defining a person's relationship and place in society. Marital status, along with what we do for a living, is often one of the first pieces of information we give to others about ourselves. It's so important, in fact, that most married people wear a symbol of their marriage on their hand.
language-of-love language inclusion
Marriage is a language of love, equality, and inclusion.
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Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.
winning simple years
Courts should always do the right thing. But if winning were as simple as making a good argument and filing a good brief, then we would have won the freedom to marry 40 years ago. We must put the legal work next to the public education work next to the legislative work next to the organizing work, and that's what's brought us so far.
government program should
When it comes to federal programs, even if states are discriminating, the federal government should not.
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I think there's tremendous significance and opportunity in Americans seeing legally married gay couples treated with respect in our nation's capital.
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What is so powerful here is that we have the first federal appellate court and it's a case coming out of Utah affirming in the strongest, clearest, boldest terms that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry and equal protection for all Americans and all means all, including gay couples.
engagement
There is no marriage without engagement
growing-up believe kids
I'm not in this just to change the law. It's about changing society. I want gay kids to grow up believing that they can get married, that they can join the Scouts, that they can choose the life they want to live.