Why Marriage Matters America, Equality | Evan Wolfson | Talks at Google

Today we have Evan Wolfson, who is the founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, an organization here in New York. And he's a civil rights activist and an attorney. He was named one of the 100 most influential or important people by Time magazine in 2004. I think that was the title, Evan. Feel free to correct me. And he wrote this book called why Marriage Matters America, Equality and Gay People's Right to Marry. And so he's here to talk about the book and the topic. I hope you enjoy it, and we'll have questions and answers afterwards. Okay, thank you, Evan.

Thank you. Well, thank you. It's really great to be here with you guys today. As I say in the book, why Marriage Matters, now, I've done what my publisher always tells me to do. As we say in the book, this country is in a civil rights conversation. And that conversation, of course, consists of millions and millions of conversations in legislatures, in courts, sometimes at the ballot box, and most importantly, around kitchen tables in living rooms in companies like this, as people talk about who gay people are, why marriage matters to them, and how the denial of marriage harms these couples, their children, their loved ones, the people they work with, the community and our society as a whole. And this conversation, these conversations, are part of the classic pattern of human rights or civil rights advance in this country and in every other. The classic pattern, as I say in the book, can be summed up in one word, patchwork. For decades and decades, and sometimes for centuries, human rights struggles unfold through patchwork. And in the United States, that means that some states move toward equality faster than others, while others, for a time, sometimes a long time, resist or even regress. They get worse before they get better. And in this patchwork of advances and discrimination, of conversations, of engagement, of people thinking anew, we ultimately see the history of our country tells us things that seemed unimaginable, things that seemed fixed and necessary and unchangeable, in fact, change as people learn new realities, push past their discomfort and move toward greater inclusion and greater equality. Now, just to make real how this patchwork is, in fact, unfolding, how this kind of civil rights change looks like when you're in the middle of it, Let me give you a few facts. This year, 2007, we have seen a record number of state legislatures consider marriage equality bills, that is to say, bills proposed to end the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage, a record number. This follows 2006, last year, when we saw a lot of disappointment, a lot of stumbling. We saw courts, including the high court, right Here in New York, fail to get this question right. We saw these courts, under the pressures they were under, fail to end the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage, often pointing to reasons that seemed, shall we say, unpersuasive and more a product of the political pressure on the court than solid legal reasoning or the courts doing their job. And in the question and answer period, we can certainly talk about what some of those courts said, what, what kinds of arguments they put forward and where they went wrong. But the important point here is that after this very challenging, difficult year last year when courts failed to end this exclusion and Massachusetts remained the only state so far to have ended the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage, we enter 2007 and far from this movement coming to an end, far from, as some people predicted, it being too early, too hard, gay people should settle, should go slower, not that important. The country's not ready. We see this year 2007, a record number of states considering marriage bills and a record number of states passing measures on the road to marriage, that is to say, not yet ending the exclusion from marriage itself, but providing through new legal mechanisms and half steps and part time solutions, some measure of protection for same sex couples. And so let me flesh that out with a few facts. As of today, once the laws that pass this year go into effect, here's what the landscape looks like. We have one state that has ended marriage discrimination, that is to say, one state out of 50 in which same sex couples have the freedom to marry with the same rights, the same rules, the same responsibilities and the same respect as any other committed couple. That's Massachusetts. Six more states, counting those who have moved forward this year, have now advanced to all but marriage. They don't yet allow same sex couples to marry, but they have created new parallel non marriage marital statuses in some states called civil union, in some states called domestic partnership. New legal mechanisms and new legal statuses to provide most of parallel similar legal rights and responsibilities to committed couples. And those six states are California, Connecticut, New Hampshire, the newest, New Jersey last year, Oregon also this year, and Vermont. We have two states where government officials have in official statements, whether through court filings or attorney General's opinions, where two states that have said they will honor treat with complete respect with non discrimination the lawful marriages and lawful unions that same sex couples have from out of their state, even though as of yet same sex couples in their state cannot enter into those unions. And those two states are New York and Rhode Island. And finally we have three states plus the District of Columbia that have enacted some form of partnership protection, not at the highest level of all, but marriage in that sort of civil union partnership class that I described, but steps along the way to provide some legal protections on the road to full marriage equality. And those three are Hawaii, Maine and Washington, plus the District of Columbia. So now, if you do the math, if you look at where do same sex couples and their children live in the United States according to the census, and you map that out and then you overlay it with these legal advances, this patchwork of progress that I've just described to you, 23% of this country's gay and lesbian people, 23%, live in states that now provide the freedom to marry or a legal mechanism close to marriage. If you add in New York and Rhode island, where some of those families are going to have protection by virtue of having gotten married in Canada or ultimately in Massachusetts or in some of these other states that provide comparable protection, you have more than 30% of the gay people in this country who live in jurisdictions that provide marriage or significant steps toward marriage for them and their loved ones. And if you add in the states that, though far short of marriage, have begun down that path of providing some protection, some responsibility, some legal acknowledgement of these families, we have 35% of the gay people in this country who live in a state that provides at least some statewide legal acknowledgement of and protection for their families. Now, what's especially striking about this math is that none of this existed even seven years ago. All of this progress, far short as it is, of full equality, complex and unacceptable as it is to be in a patchwork of uncertainty and complication, all of this progress has taken place within the last seven years. And though we still have clearly a very, very long way to go toward providing that every person in this country have the full dignity, the full security, the full clarity, the full equality of being able to protect the most important person in his or her life, their children, their loved ones, through the freedom to marry. Though we still have a long way to go, the fact that we have made such tremendous progress in this advance over just the past seven years is highly significant, especially when you think about what those seven years have looked like in this country's history. And to avoid being excessively political, we'll simply say that they have not been good years for this country's respect for, for basic constitutional rights, for inclusion, for unity, but rather, with the wind in the face, we have made this progress. Now, just a couple days ago, the Gallup poll issued its latest findings. And of course, Gallup has now been polling on this question for several years. And the headline out of the latest Gallup poll was that support for gay people's inclusion and equality in the country has, as they put it now rebounded to where it was in mid 2003. In other words, after many, many years of, shall we say, completely intolerant and challenging numbers on questions like do you think being gay is acceptable? Do you think that being gay is a moral posture? Do you believe gay people should have basic rights such as the freedom to marry or the right to hold a job without discrimination, Questions on which we've seen slow but steady increase in the year 2003. We saw a record number of people having now discussed gay people's freedom to marry, talked about the needs of same sex couple and grappled with this question hit an all time high, following which there was a tremendous barrage of assault and attacks and efforts to divide the country on this question of civil rights and inclusion for same sex couples and their kids. An assault that took its toll in the numbers. But again, consistent with this pattern of patchwork, what Gallup is now showing is that after dips as a president, a pope, a political party and operatives attacked the question of gay people's freedom to MARRY in in 2003, 2004, 2005, the public has absorbed these conversations. I talked about earlier, thought about it more, had a chance to see more gay people, hear more of the stories of same sex couples, how the denial of marriage harms their kids. And Gallup tells us this week has now rebounded back to where it was at its all time high in 2003. So that today, amidst many positive numbers, Gallup reports that 53% of the American people oppose gay people's freedom to marry and a full 46% now support the freedom to marry. Now that's not good enough, but it is far better than most people think. It is far better than people think they're supposed to think. It is far better than many of the pundits comment and far better than many political candidates fear. And what it shows us again is that as we engage in these conversations, as we talk about who gay people are, why non gay people care about them too, how the denial of marriage harms same sex couples and their children, and why non gay people have a stake in ending this discrimination. The more we have these conversations, the more we fight the fight, the more we push forward, the more we bring court cases to court in well chosen venues, the more we engage in the work in the legislatures and push for bills to end discrimination in marriage and push for measures on the road to getting there. The more we do this engagement, the closer we come to marriage equality. 35% covered is not good enough. 46% in support is not good enough. But from where we were seven years ago, it's tremendous progress and shows how much can change if we do the job now. Gay people, of course, are not the first people to have to struggle against discrimination in the United States, and gay people are not even the first people to have to struggle against discrimination in marriage. Marriage has always been a human rights battleground on which larger questions of what kind of country we're going to have, what kind of society this is going to be, what the boundary between the individual is and the government ought to be. Who should get to make important personal questions in your life? You, Somebody else? The government? A majority? Large questions have always been contested throughout American history On this human rights battlefield of marriage. In the lifetime of some of the people in this room in the last several decades, we have seen at least four major battles, four major struggles over what kind of country this should be take place on this human rights battlefield of marriage. On this battlefield of marriage, we fought and ended government interference in such an important personal decision as whether or not a couple should be free to part or whether, having been married, they are locked together for life, even if the relationship has become a violent relationship, abusive, or has failed. This question of whether you should get to decide who your primary person should be and how your legal relationship with that person ought to be arranged is now your decision. But there was a time, not so long ago in American history when it was dictated by the government and those who believed that you should not be free to make the decision Whether or not to remain together or divorce had the upper hand. That was wrong, and we changed it. On this human rights battlefield of marriage, we fought and ended government intrusion into as personal and private a decision as whether or not to engage in sex, whether or not to engage in sexual intimacy with the person you choose, and whether or not to engage in sex with contraception and thereby be able to avoid a pregnancy. This question of whether even married people ought to be allowed to use contraception in their own home not so long ago was believed to be something that the government should decide. And religious leaders, politicians, lawyers, and the law said that if we allow people to make their own choices about contraception, about reproductive freedom, society will crumble, Marriage will be undermined, Children will be harmed, God will be displeased. Well, this country had a Long and painful patchwork struggle to dismantle this intrusion into people's personal choice. And over time, with ups and downs, legal cases and legislative work, we ended up that government intrusion. And on the human rights battlefield of marriage, we fought and ended race restrictions on who can marry whom. People sincerely believed for most of American history that it was appropriate, indeed necessary for the government to say, this is the right kind of person for you to marry, and this is wrong. And people believed that if people were allowed to marry, quote, unquote, the wrong kind of person, society would crumble, marriage would be undermined, children would be harmed. My favorite court decision, and it was one of many, many, many on the road to trying to end these restrictions on who can marry whom, came from a court in Georgia which said that if we allow these disgusting, by which the court meant interracial marriages, if we allow these disgusting marriages to happen, it will produce a race of children that are sickly and effeminate. Other courts held, in the words of one in particular, that almighty God created the races red, brown, yellow, black and Malay and placed them on separate continents, that they might not mix and. But for man's interference with this God's plan, by which the court meant slavery, which mixed the races, but for man's interference with God's plan, this question of interracial marriage would not be coming up today. Now, the court that handed down that ruling was ruling in a case involving a couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who an interracial couple, had left their home state in Virginia, gone to Washington, D.C. where they were allowed to get married, got married, came back home, and were actually arrested for the crime of marrying the wrong kind of person. They were actually arrested in their marital bedroom. In their bedroom with their marriage certificate hanging over their bed. They challenged that, went to court, and the court found them guilty of this crime of marrying the wrong kind of person and gave them a choice. He would either, he said, sentence them to 25 years in prison, to a year in prison, or give them the opportunity to leave the state of Virginia for 25 years exile. Well, they chose that 25 years exile, went out of state, hired a lawyer and came back and sued. That led to the Almighty God ruling against them, a ruling which was then upheld by the state supreme court of Virginia. And then that decision was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Now, the United States Supreme Court had gotten this question of race restrictions on who could marry whom wrong. In the past, it had upheld race discrimination in marriage because the justices felt, as many Americans did, indeed whopping majorities that it was appropriate for the government to decide who could marry whom or that the government should be allowed to do this, and there was no right to go to court to challenge it. But this time, the case came again before the United States Supreme Court. And now, in the best name ruling ever, Loving vs. Virginia, the court struck it down. And race restrictions on who could marry whom came down. That year was 1967. And this year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Loving versus Virginia. We'll be celebrating it on June 12th coming up. What's important to note is that when the U.S. supreme Court handed down that important ruling, talking about racial equality, talking about the freedom to marry, talking about this large question of who should get to make such important personal decisions in a country dedicated to equality and the pursuit of happiness, when the U.S. supreme Court handed down Loving vs. Virginia, 90%, sorry, 70%, 70% of the American people opposed interracial marriage. It took another 15, 25 years, 25 years of struggle and engagement and discussion and conversations before we saw for the first time a majority of Americans in a poll in 1992 say that they were okay with interracial marriage. That's how long of a struggle it took to shift the attitudes, even as we struggled in courts and legislatures to change the law. All of this battling on the human rights battlefield, marriage. And in the fourth instance of struggle against discrimination and exclusion here in the United States, on this battleground of marriage, we had to fight and end the tradition, the definition of marriage that said that women who marry men become the property of their husbands, that women who marry men actually lose their legal rights. It was not so long ago that people in this country truly believed this tradition, this definition of marriage, this law's constraint on women were all necessary and God ordained. As recently as the 1980s, there was a case involving this question of whether a husband could be prosecuted for raping his wife. And the court found that, no, the husband couldn't because he's entitled to take what quote belongs to him. And this idea called the marital rape exemption was part of this legal definition, this tradition, this idea of marriage that was held and embodied in the law as necessary and intrinsic to the way society could survive as recently as in the 1980s. And I know this because this is not just some artifact from ancient times. I myself, as a young attorney back in my hair days, worked on the case that ended this marital rape exemption. And that was a court ruling that, as I said, didn't take place eons ago. It was 1984, and it wasn't in Utah, it wasn't in Alabama. It was right here in New York. So as recently as the 1980s, the law of this country still said that women who marry men are not equal. We had to fight that and change it. And today for most people, this seems unimaginable. It just seems like that must be from the Civil War. It can't be the way people thought. And that is the testament to how on the one hand, things can be deeply rooted and believed in and people can think they're necessary and must be the way they are and can't change. But if we do the work and engage in the patchwork of progress and conversations, things do change. And when they change, people embrace them and and come to see that we have made the country better and what seemed like it was going to be a big deal and that things were going to be in risk. And the gloom and doom crowd will say, society will be destroyed, marriage will be undermined. It's necessary and it's God's will. Once the change happens, people realize that not only can they live with it, but we are all in fact better off. And it's that very same kind of struggle on this battleground of marriage that our country is engaged in today. We are met once again on this battleground of marriage. And today it is same sex couples and their children and their loved ones and non gay people who care about what kind of country this is going to be, who are engaged in this conversation, who are making this patchwork of progress and who are taking something that seems intractable and changing. We have a long way to go. I told you the number of states, I told you where public opinion is. For most young people today, the generation coming into power, this discrimination seems absurd. It seems to them, and in fact it seems to the majority of Americans, whether they like it or not, that it's inevitable that this exclusion of same sex couples from marriage will come down well. Just a decade or so ago, most people thought it impossible that we would be able to remove this restriction on marriage and see same sex couples marry. To go from impossibility to inevitability is great, but the problem with both impossibility and inevitability is it skips over the part where you do the work to actually make the change. It is great that we have created a sense of expectation, a deeper understanding, the real momentum that will push past the barriers in a patchwork of progress to a better country of inclusion and equality. But it doesn't just happen by itself. The loving case, the historic civil rights case that I described regarding race restrictions on marriage was not the first time a couple challenged the exclusion. It came after at least 13 major cases that had failed. And then the 14th bore fruit. It came after decades and decades and decades of conversation and struggle. Now the good news is, same sex couples struggle for the freedom to marry is going much quicker. It's going quicker because in part, we build on the civil rights accomplishments, the civil rights inheritance, the civil rights lessons of other companion struggles, women's equality, the struggle for racial equality, struggles that of course, are also not done. But the struggle to end discrimination on the basis of race, on the basis of sex, or on the basis of sexual orientation will not simply happen itself. It will be achieved, the struggle will be successful when all of us do our part. And so let me end with one little note on what each of you joining all of us together, can do. And then we'll get into the questions and answers that will help us move forward and help each person here find his or her voice in this civil rights conversation. And that final note is this is not simply a question of the law, though. It is about ending exclusion under the law. It is about ensuring that America keeps its promise to treat all people equally under the law and that the laws be fair. This is first and foremost a question of real people who are being harmed. And so the most important thing that each one of us can do is to add our own voice. Talking about who we are if we're gay. Talk about how the denial of marriage harms you if you're gay. Tell your story. And don't think you don't have a story, because many of the people in your life may indeed love you, may respect you. Obviously, there are companies like Google that treat employees fairly, regardless of their sexual orientation and have inclusion and welcome and encourage discussion. And what's problematic about that is that that kind of comfort, that kind of inclusion, that kind of ease of getting along in the people you're dealing with actually can mask the fact that when you leave this room today, those who are non gay, in fact have certain protections and responsibilities that matter deeply that their gay fellow employees do not share. Because under the law today, here in New York and in 49 out of the 50 states, at the state level and in every state, including Massachusetts, under federal law, gay people, even gay people at a company as welcoming and supportive as Google, are second class citizens denied a vast array of protections and responsibilities that matter in, in every area of life, from birth to death, with taxes in between, and so if you're gay, your job is to connect those dots. The people who love you, who like you, who work with you, who respect you, may have no idea that in fact you are a second class citizen who in fact is vulnerable to legal discrimination for yourself and your loved ones, your children, your partner, intangible and intangible ways. And it's your job to transform somebody liking you or knowing you into understanding the discrimination that you in fact face, even in a welcoming environment, and how they can help change it. And if you're not gay and are part of this conversation, you also have a story to tell and a voice to raise because you too have a stake in this struggle, as I described in talking about the four battles that preceded this one, on this battleground of marriage. This is not simply about whether you're gay and want to marry the person you love. This is not simply about marriage and the legal protections and responsibilities and the intangible security and clarity and dignity that come with it. This is ultimately a question of what kind of country we're going to have. And non gay people have a tremendous stake in that question. Because we begin where I, we end where I began, which is that at stake in this civil rights conversation are these larger questions of whether government should interfere in personal decisions or whether you should get to make those decisions. Whether this is a society that will treat men and women equally, or a society that will impose roles and expectations on people based on their sex. Whether this is a society that, to further religious freedom as well as personal freedom, respects the separation of church and state, or a society where government is hijacked and used to impose the religious views of some on others. And ultimately it's about who gets to make the most important personal decisions in a country dedicated to life, liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. The government, the politicians, a majority, or each of us, gay or non gay, we all have a stake in this struggle. And leaving this room today, whether it's here in New York where the legislature is considering a marriage bill as one of the record number of states who are doing that this year, or in any other state in this country, the work of turning that 35% of people covered to 100%, that 46% in favor of equality in marriage to 100%, that work has to be done person to person, group to group, conversation to conversation. And each and every one of us can truly make that difference. And when they then celebrate the 40th anniversary of the end of sex discrimination in marriage, as this year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the end of race discrimination in marriage. Hopefully not so long from now, each one of us will know that when the moment was here, we did our part. Thank you.

Thank you, Evan. So we're going to take questions now, and hopefully we can take questions from the remote offices, too. I guess we'll figure that. But if you want to ask a question, please use a microphone so it gets recorded in the video.

Thank you. Yeah, so there's a microphone over here if people just want to go to that and ask the question. And I guess, Matias, you'll do the figuring out how to get remote questions.

Hi, I got here a little late. My name is Ann. So if I miss this, let me know. I helped with the Fair Wisconsin campaign, which was. I don't know if you talked about it, which is the ban that was supposed to be put on the amendment to ban the acknowledgement of civil unions and gay marriage. And it was passed in about 22 states. And it was exciting to be a part of it because Wisconsin was the first state that actually had funding to fight this ban. And unfortunately, it was passed by 60% in our state. But when we looked over why it wasn't successful, we found that we had done canvassing, we had done calling in a diverse range of neighborhoods, but we didn't penetrate the minority communities like Latin American and African American communities. And I'm just wondering how the lessons we learned in that state can be transferred to other states to avoid this ban being passed continually.

Right. Well, thanks. I described in the beginning how the classic pattern of civil rights advance in America is patchwork, where some states move toward equality faster while others resist or even regress. That's the pattern. It may not be the best way to do civil rights business. People ought to have their rights no matter where they live. People ought to be treated with respect no matter which corner of the country they're in, and they shouldn't have to fight for it. But the fact of the matter is, the classic pattern is civil, is patchwork, and you have to fight for it. And you don't always win the first time you fight. And this has been true for all kinds of people throughout American history, and it is today true for gay people. What's different right now is that the right wing, those who are opposed to inclusion and equality for same sex couples and their kids, have adopted a new and particularly dangerous and cruel tactic. And that is that not content with this patchwork of laws and discrimination here and some more, some less, here and there, they've Added a new layer of discrimination with this campaign in the last several years to amend not just the law of a state, which, as I said earlier, in 49 out of the 50 states already treats gay couples unequally. What they've done now is begun this tactic of amending the state constitution to prevent gay couples from ever changing the discrimination. And they are not only pushing these amendments into the state constitutions to preclude same sex couples from marrying, but actually, as you correctly noted in your question, to preclude the state of Wisconsin from civil union, from partnership, from any number of other protections, large or small. And in many of those states, the language actually even goes beyond gay couples to preclude unmarried different sex couples from having the protections associated with marriage. So what we're seeing now is that in the course of this hideous campaign of attack over the last several years foisted on the American people by an anti gay industry, the usual suspect groups like Focus on the Family and so on, in alignment with a political party for its own political ends during election cycles, pushing this wave of anti gay discriminatory state constitutional amendments. And as you correctly noted, they have 20 some states have enacted these measures. That's the bad news. Those families in those states already being discriminated against, already being denied legal protections, now have this overlay of legal discrimination that they're also going to have to overcome on the road to full equality. The good news, however, is that that's not the last word unless we allow it to be the last word. So, for example, one of the states that enacted a civil union law this year, but they call it partnership, it is a on the road to marriage parallel marriage status, not marriage, but approximating marriage in the legal benefits and protections at the state level is Oregon. Oregon was one of the states that in 2004's wave of attacks was stampeded into enacting one of these discriminatory constitutional amendments. But the people in Oregon, gay and non gay, committed to equality, didn't take that for the final word, Organized again, regrouped, fought hard, went to the legislature, went to the public, went to the governor, worked and worked, and this year passed a partnership law, not yet marriage. In order to get marriage, they're going to have to overturn that discriminatory amendment. But they have made this significant advance, an advance that might not have happened so quickly in Oregon were it not for the conversations that arose in the course of this hideous campaign. So the lessons to learn from Wisconsin, from Oregon and from these other battles is that sometimes you can't win the battle fully, you can't get the majority with you. On a short term election year time frame governed by the constraints of a political campaign, the enemy's throwing in money and people is not having time to think it through. But in the real campaign, the campaign over time to actually engage, talk, get fair minded people to think about this, prompt them to push past their discomfort and really get to think about it, get them to ask the questions that are really on their mind. And in this book it's organized chapter by chapter questions that real people are asking and takes those questions seriously and talks about how to answer them. The more we prompt those conversations over time, whether it's Oregon and I'm confident Wisconsin, we will build the support that will enable us to take steps toward equality, move hearts and minds in the right direction and ultimately bring down these discriminatory barriers whether in the law or in the state constitutions. But, but it will take time. And that's again why it's so important in this patchwork where not every state will move at the same time frame. That's why it's so important that in the states where we can make these advances further fastest that we do so and create the climate, give the information, give the living example of families helped and no one hurt that enables people, no matter what state they're in, to take a deep breath and actually see that the sky doesn't fall when couples are treated with respect, that the couple getting married across the street doesn't do anything to take away my marriage over here. And as we do our part of talking with people in all 50 states, hearts and minds will move in the right direction and we will see that progress led by the places where we can move fastest. But in all 50 states working to be able to catch the wave that comes from elsewhere and create the climate in which steps are taken in the right direction. Other questions?

Hi, I'm mj. First of all, thank you for coming to speak with us. I really enjoyed your speech so far. Just a quick question on perception and motivation. If you look back throughout history, you've, you know, groups of vote for women, you've got the abolishment of slavery, you've got the civil rights movement. And you look back on those situations, you see massive amounts of people. Dr. Martin Luther King uprisings, sit ins marches. And when you look at the gay and lesbian community, you have pride now. And the perception out there can be a little bit silly sometimes. It's very outlandish, it's very outrageous. How are we Supposed to come together as a community and be actually politically active. When we have a perception that's not like in the 60s with the, with the civil rights movements, we don't have, you know, the suffragettes, you know, how do we change that perception in the rest of the, in the rest of the country to say we're serious about this? And then also on the same thing, on motivation, even within our own community, it's very, very tough to. You know, it's not college anymore where we can tempt people with pizza. You know, what are ways that we can get people involved, we can get people motivated because we see that a lot, that just no one really seems to care.

Well, I appreciate the question, and I definitely understand where you're coming from. I want to push back a little bit and say that for all the negative that you just described, there's actually plenty of positive going on too. As I just mentioned, we went from zero statewide protections to in some sense, 35% having some level of state protection. Seven years. To go that far, particularly in the most hostile climate to civil rights and inclusion in American history, certainly in recent American history, meaning over decades, that's actually not bad. Right. So I really want to underscore that, because what it shows is that people should not take refuge in disparaging the mood or the climate or the national circumstances or their fellow community members and use as an excuse to. To not actually focus on where you can make a difference and get involved. In most of the states, including, for example, right here in New York, there are organizations of gay and non gay people coming together to end this discrimination in marriage here in New York, just because we're here, although I'm happy to talk remotely and if you go in fact to freedomtomarry.org, look up your state, you'll see the groups you can get involved with, gay and non gay to be part of this fight so you don't have to do it alone. But here in New York, there's a group called the Pride Agenda, which is a political organization dedicated to working in the legislature, working in the public opinion, working through a program they have called Pride in the Pulpits, which is reaching out to religious leaders. They have a pride in the workplace, which reaches out to employers and unions. They have programs for people to get enlisted in to change the climate, to push the legislatures to move this forward and to end discrimination in marriage. And this year we saw the election of a governor here in New York who is pro marriage, who has said he favors marriage equality and he's introducing a bill now sponsored by Assemblymember Danny o' Donnell to end this discrimination. Sign up, mobilize, work your legislature, raise money, talk to your non gay friends and allies about why this discrimination needs to end. Not someday, esoterically, but right here, right now in New York. We are within a year or two of making that happen here in New York, which means we have to be working now, because it doesn't happen when you work at the end of the year. It happens when you do a year's worth of work to get there, but a year's worth of work to win marriage in New York or in California or in New Jersey or Connecticut or the other battleground states where this is within reach. And I don't mean within reach 20 years from now. I mean within reach within the next one, two, three years. These are opportunities to get involved. And they didn't just come about because the tide of inevitability wafted them toward us. It came because some people are actually doing really serious hard work. So that's the pushback on your question. But I will acknowledge that when you're in the middle of a civil rights struggle, it doesn't always appear as it does when you're looking back 40 years later, 30 years later, and it's sort of wrapped in that golden inevitability of how wonderful everything is and triumph just occurs and hearts and minds open and everything is great. That's not what it feels like when you're in the middle of it. What it feels like is exactly what you're describing. Why aren't more people doing more? Why is this discrimination still here, Mom? Why don't you understand? And the answer to it is to engage in these conversations, join these organizations, do your personal part, and write to 10 or 20 or 30 others in your life and say to them why this matters to you. And you don't usually talk to them about politics, but you want them to know this matters and you need them to pay attention. Have that conversation with people. And don't just assume that because somebody likes you or loves you, your college roommate, your mother, your whoever, don't just assume that because they're good or tolerant or nice or care about you that they necessarily understand this at all. We can't assume that. We have to do the work of engaging them. And that's personal work, not just what about those organizations then Banding together through organizations, we can reach broader groups of people, and that's how we achieve social change. And it is true, too, that when you look at the 60s. When you look at the 50s, it looks like, and in fact was true for many parts of that tremendous mobilization, people willing to get up and make a difference. And we often contrast that with the era in which we live. But we're not in the 50s. We're not in the 60s. We're here. And as you just said, there are many things in the 50s and 60s that weren't so great. And people who were marching and working and organizing didn't always feel so supported and safe and accompanied, but they went out and did it anyway. And they made the changes for which we're deeply grateful today. And we're going to do the same thing and have the privilege of living now at a time when this change is happening. And we're the ones who are going to decide whether it happens in 50 years or whether it happens in one or two or three, right here and in 15 or so in the country. That's up to us. And us doesn't depend on what someone else does. Us depends on what each one of us does. And if people go to freedomtomarry.org, or prideagenda.org here in New York or all the other groups, they will find ways of getting involved. Copy them, cut and paste them, send them to some of your friends. Urge people to take action. It's all here in this book. It's appendix. I don't remember C or D or something. How to get involved, what to do. And it talks about how everyone can make a difference. If you're a joiner, here are the ways. Join this group. Work with this. Do this if you're a loner, if you prefer to do it online, or if you prefer to do it anonymously, there are ways you can do your part. The key is for each of us to do it. Other questions? Yeah, there are any questions from remote offices? Nobody knows. Well, we know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to add to your answer to Josh's question.

I. I remember the actions that I took in England and how desperately useless it felt nearly 20 years ago and.

How far we've come. I would never have believed that we.

Would have almost, but not quite, marriage today.

I wanted to ask about how well.

The patchwork currently correlates with past patchworks and whether that gives you any good predictors of when we finally get federal changes. And also if you have anything to add about immigration, equality and that kind of stuff.

Sure, it's a great set of questions. Now, obviously these are historical lessons. That doesn't mean there's one set pattern that will be replicated exactly, particularly in terms of timing. For example, the good news is it took most of American history to end race restrictions on who could marry whom and to end the subordination of women in marriage. I mean, we're talking centuries. That took centuries. This is not going to take centuries. Our struggle will not take centuries. We have this within our reach. If we do the reaching, this generation today, if I may include myself in the generation coming up, this group of people, this cohort who are living today, are going to live to see this if we do that work. By contrast, when it came to race, it literally was most of American history. From 1776 until 1948, not a single court in the country had the courage to strike down the government's rules about who could marry whom. And when that first Court ruled in 1948, it was by a vote of four to three, the same as the Massachusetts ruling, becoming the first to strike down sex discrimination in marriage that we just saw in 2003. So ours is going much faster, and this is within our reach. That's. That's the good news. The bad news, of course, is that, as I mentioned, thanks to your question, the opponents of equality have adopted this new tactic of pushing not only for discriminatory laws, not only for tremendous opposition to this struggle for equality, but enshrining some of that discrimination into state constitutions. And that is a barrier that's going to have to be torn down state by state for a period of time, of time, until ultimately it comes down nationwide. The key to bringing it down nationwide, to answer your question, is to create the climate in which either the United States Supreme Court ends this discrimination throughout the country, or Congress, acting through federal law, passes a law to end this discrimination throughout the country. The key to getting either one of those two national actors to take this action toward national resolution is to create the climate in which they will do the right thing. And the elements of that climate are a critical mass of states that have ended marriage discrimination. So people can see with their own eyes, families helped and no one hurt. And a critical mass is not 50. It may not even be a majority, but it's clearly more than one. And one is what we now have. But remember, going back to my discussion, we now have, depending on how many you want to count it, 23, 30, 35% of the American people living in states where some degree of protection has now been achieved only in the last seven years. So we're on our way toward creating that critical mass of States, we also need to create a critical mass of public opinion. Now what that critical mass and public opinion in support of ending discrimination, in support of acknowledging that gay couples exist, they're not going away. And it makes no sense to shove a group of people outside the legal structure of responsibility and commitment that other people cherish. What that critical mass of public opinion is, I can't tell you exactly. It's certainly not 100%. It may not even have to be a majority. Remember I told you 40 years ago when the Supreme Court struck down race discrimination in marriage, 70% of the American people oppose interracial marriage. Well, we're already doing better than that. I told you the Gallup poll number 46% already favor equality. Now we need more. Critical mass may be more than 46%, but it's within our reach. And of course, the other good news about that 46% is it's not evenly distributed. In states like New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, we see majorities or near majorities now in favor of ending discrimination in marriage. Well, that wasn't true 10 years ago. It's through the work of people like the people here who got up and had conversations and joined organizations and pushed and didn't just trust that it would waft in on inevitability. So that's the analogy to these lessons of the past and how we derive strength and inspiration from them, as well as lessons on the specific question of immigration. One of the main protections that comes with marriage under current US Law is that the family is treated as something worth protecting and people have the opportunity to seek unification for their family and to make sure that in the case of a binational couple, that the American partner is not severed from her or his partner from overseas. Same sex couples, no matter how long they've been together, no matter how committed their relationship, no matter how much they want to be living in the United States together, have no such legal protection. That discrimination will only end when one Congress passes a law to cure that specific issue. In other words, they could pass a law saying for family unification purposes, we will acknowledge married couples and also committed same sex couples who meet such and such a description. So that's one possible approach. And there is currently pending in Congress right now a bill, the Uniting American Families act, that would do that, sponsored by the congressman from this district. In fact, Jerry Nadler. The other way to end that discrimination is not to simply single out the immigration hardship, but to actually allow committed same sex couples to marry with the same rules, the same responsibilities, and thereby access the same treatment and same obligations under the law, including protection for immigration. That will happen as I just described earlier, not tomorrow, but once we have a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public opinion that help non gay people to see how wrong it is to force somebody to have to choose between her country and her love. People should not have to do that. There's no reason to force people to make that choice here in the United States. Especially not when so many other countries, countries we look to who share our values, actually have cured that discrimination already. One more.

We're kind of out of time.

Okay, we're out of time. Thank you very much. Whether or not you get the book, most of this stuff is available online for free. The important thing is that everybody here, gay or non gay, has a voice and has a circle of people whom you can reach. And if you do your part of reaching them, pushing them to think about it, pushing them to ask about it, pushing them to talk about others, we will be the ones who end this discrimination and allow committed same sex couples the same freedom to marry with all the rights, all the responsibilities, all the respect that they're due. Thank you.