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...
emotional practical tangible
It's emotional as well as economic, practical as well as personal, tangible as well as intangible.
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.
commitment caring thinking
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.
couple gay opportunity
I think there's tremendous significance and opportunity in Americans seeing legally married gay couples treated with respect in our nation's capital.
couple powerful mean
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.
amended constitution group rights
The Constitution was never amended to take away rights from a group of Americans.
bottle drink poison presented
It's the same poison in a new bottle being presented for those who want to drink it.