Evan Wolfson, Architect of the Marriage Equality Movement, Says Don't Worry About Losing Gay Marriage—Yet.
But we also disagreed, somewhat, about how braced for "the worst"—and not just regarding gay marriage or rights—we should all be in this moment. He has some good concrete tips for you, too.
Happy mid-March and happy Friday, Caftaners. So yes, we're getting political today, and I guess that since the last Caftan was with funnyman Paul Rudnick, I'm entitled to get a bit more serious on this one! :) And as a pre-show, I'll note this: The group Indivisible (partnering with many other groups) is planning a massive rally on the Mall in D.C. starting at 11am on Saturday April 5 called HANDS OFF! Basically to tell Trump and Musk to stop seizing and destroying every single aspect of our government. Would you please just consider trying to make it if you can? (You can register here; if you do, there's an informational Zoom on March 21.) Pro-tip: Book a motel outside the city in Virginia or Maryland the night before and take D.C. transit into the city the next day—it's much cheaper than staying in the city!
If you can't make it to D.C., there are sister protests planned all over the country that day. (Just hit the link above.) But it would send a huge message to Trump, Musk and the world if masses of people took the time and trouble to get to D.C. that day. So please consider it! And...apparently that's peak cherry blossom time in D.C.! So go enjoy the beauty while fighting tyranny at the same time!
Okay, so this interview: I presume many of you have heard of Evan Wolfson, the gay lawyer who started building the marriage equality movement in the late 1990s. Here is a funny little story I did for New York magazine in 2007, when his movement was celebrating its tenth anniversary…and when Massachusetts was the only state that had gay marriage.
I've known Evan for many years and he's a great guy, always willing to dispense advice (as he has to me in the past, related to advocacy gigs I was working on at the time), so I reached out to him Monday to discuss the question: How worried should we be that, amid a right-wing White House and Congress and a right-leaning Supreme Court, we're going to lose gay marriage? (I know I should say "marriage equality," but let's face it, "gay marriage" is what most people call it.)
Not that worried—yet. That's the crux of what Wolfson told me. But read our whole conversation. It's a good one and it goes to the heart of everything we're facing right now, including the White House's very worrisome trend of flat-out ignoring court rulings. (All I can say is, if we don't flood the streets the minute we hear that Trump has flouted a Supreme Court ruling—if indeed this Trump-friendly SCOTUS actually rules against him—our already highly compromised "democracy" is toast.)
Evan and I disagreed a bit on just how Debbie Downer we all should be feeling at this moment, but I think we landed in the same place, which is that we all should be doing whatever we can right now to push back on the Trump administration’s relentless advances against the governmental infrastructure we rely on for everything from health to workplace and environmental safety to Social Security—not to mention against the rulings of the court system. And, in his clear and methodical organizer style, Evan lays out clear steps here for how to do just that.
Anyway, here's the convo, which I'm not using a paywall for. So please, if you think I’m doing both fun and important work with now with Caftan and don't already support me at $5/month, consider it?
Thank you!
Evan, thanks so much for talking today. Since marriage equality was essentially finalized and nationalized by the Supreme Court with their rulings in 2013 and 2015 (which Wolfson is celebrating with then-vice president Biden in the video above), what have you been up to?
I spend the bulk of my time advising and assisting other movements and causes in other countries that want to apply the lessons from Freedom to Marry (FTM) to their own work. With a number of my former staff, I go around the world working with activists in more than 30 countries. We often operate under the banner FTM Global, but we don't have a real organization—we're just a team who's worked together for many years.
Can you give some examples?
We were very closely involved coaching the activists in Taiwan who delivered the first FTM win in Asia in 2019, those in Nepal who delivered the second win in 2023 and those in Thailand, which just had a victory.
We also assisted activists in Costa Rica who got the first FTM win in Central America—and we're very involved now in Guyana working with activists on decriminalizing same-sex bans, so-called sodomy laws. We're also working with countries as diverse as Japan, Czechoslovakia and Peru.
Beyond the FTM global work, I also respond to requests for advice and assistance that come from movements as diverse as animal rights, gun control, promoting or upholding democracy. Anything that I'm not against, if they come to me for advice, I'll share it.
How do you support yourself?
For the first several years, I did the FTM global work pro bono because I was teaching at Georgetown at the time and had raised enough money to allow me to do that. Once that wound down, my team and I started raising money from funders who know of our track record, like the Open Society Foundation (George Soros' group) and the Wellspring Fund as well as individual donors, so now we're paid out of this FTM global fund. I also still teach on and off at Georgetown and Yale and I guest-teach at places like Columbia and NYU. And finally, I have an affiliation with the world's largest law firm, Dentons.
Thanks. So before we talk about what's happening now, give us a thumbnail breakdown of how the FTM movement achieved success.
If I were to boil it down to three words, they would be: hope, clarity and tenacity.
The third, tenacity, because significant or transformative change takes time and isn't going to be linear. There are going to be many defeats and disappointments along the way.
Clarity meaning about what is your goal and what it will take to achive it, from strategies and partnerships to resources, structures and allies. For FTM, the goal was to win the freedom to marry nationwide and to make sure that all marriages were treated equally and with respect, no matter where people lived. It was a finite goal—not the sum total of everything that liberals, progressives or Democrats believe in.
And hope means that you have to believe in the change you are seeking, that others will rise to fairness, and that a critical mass of people can be moved. You don't need everyone—you need enough.
Ok, thanks. So let's get right to the question: How likely do you think it is that the SCOTUS decisions codifying national marriage equality will be reversed by the current SCOTUS, which is much more conservative than the SCOTUS that ruled for marriage equality? They've already reversed Roe v. Wade and returned decision-making over abortion to the states.
This is certainly a dark and terrible time, and every day brings a new disgrace, danger and diminishment of America's standing in the world and of people's prosperity and dignity. I wouldn't minimize how dreadful Trump and his Republican enablers are or the immense damage they are doing to so many in our country and the world. And I think it will get worse before it gets better and people should be emotionally and mentally prepared for that.
At the same time, one of the rules that experts on tyranny, fascism and authoritarianism have said again and again is: Don't surrender in advance. Don't make it worse than it is. I don't think it's helpful to wallow or spend all your time cataloging all the terrible what-if's that might happen. We already know that what's happening is bad and we therefore should get to work fighting, resisting, pushing back to get our country back on track. If we do that successfully, we'll thereby protect ourselves against some of the potential worsening what-ifs.
Well, speaking of pushing back: I think it's worthy for people to really envision worse-case scenarios and do some hard thinking about what they'd do. Are you ready to fight to the death—or up to a certain point, at which point you leave the country if you can? You don't agree?
It depends on the person. There were plenty of times during the FTM struggle when people said, "Maybe I should move to a state with better [marriage equality] laws." Some did, some didn't. Some chose to stay and fight, or they couldn't leave their state that easily.
And ultimately, we moved it forward and changed things. So I understand how some people want to go to "what's my exit plan?" But a better question is: "What can I do to make a difference?" As opposed to fleeing, which not everybody can do. I know that sounds more judgmental than I intended. But I don't think it's helpful to wallow in the idea that we're reliving 1933 as opposed to just fighting to make sure it isn't 1933. The bad guys want you to think they're all-powerful and they want you to despair, isolate and flee. So let's not give them that.
Well, I think you can kind of do both at the same time—fight, fight, fight, and also look into an exit plan if you can. But let's stay on the fight, fight, fight for a second. I think a lot of people right now are wondering, other than voting and going to protests—the latter of which frankly I'm finding, in my own friend and family circles, is a heavy lift for a lot of people, who have some kind of huge block against going to a protest for one reason or another, even if they are outraged—people are wondering: What else can I do? That's why I think my chat with Cleve Jones a few weeks ago got so many views, because he gave some very concrete and doable advice. So what's your advice?
One is to pick something you care about that alarms you—some community that is vulnerable or hurting—and get involved with that and hence join others. It's helpful being in solidarity with people. I didn't win FTM by myself. Even if you're a more solitary type, you can still join an organization without having to attend a million meetings. You can go online and find their action steps. Or you can go down to a soup kitchen and donate your time.
I think doing mutual aid stuff like volunteering at a soup kitchen or volunteering to teach immigrants or migrants ESL, which I did all of last year, is a lovely thing. But how does it help the resistance against the Trump takeover of the U.S.?
Well, first of all, it mitigates the Trump attacks on targeted people, like immigrants or poor people. And it will make you feel better and more empowered and lead you to the next thing. And it also encourages others to take action.
So, after you do something like that, the most important thing we need to do over time is to take back political power. So ideally you would take that next step, supporting candidates in swing states or purple districts so we can take back Congress. Or putting pressure right now on Republican electeds who've enabled this Trump and Musk sabotage. Even if you live in a very blue state or district, you can support work in other places by encouraging friends in those places to form groups and organize. Or just every day between now and the next election, calling out the bad guys, cataloging their assaults, explaining to others who don't understand what is happening and why it matters. That's a lot of work, but we can all share it. That's how change is achieved in a democracy. And despite what Trump would like you to think, we are still a democracy. A fragile, beleagured one, yes, but we still have lots of civil society, lots of levers of power, our voices and our ability to mobilize and act.
And I didn't even talk about protest. It has its place, but so does asking for support, engaging, explaining things to people. Conversation is the chief engine of change. Get offline and explain things to people.
Well, for better or worse, a lot of political discourse these days does occur online. Where should people go other than there?
Well, you're right. But don't just stew and doomscroll and read a bunch of crap coming from Twitter or X or whatever, stuck in your own little online bubble of alarm. Yes, it's legit to email friends, call out false information, read reputable new sources. But you can also join an organization and go to an IRL meeting.
Something like Indivisible.
Yes, or Stand Up America.
OK. So you don't even think it's worth talking about losing marriage quality?
I'm asked that question a lot. I'd say, "Look, bad things can happen—nobody can promise you they won't." They could reverse it. But we didn't win it in the first place as a gift of the court. We won it by changing hearts and minds and by legislative and political organizing.
More so, are there enough votes on the Supreme Court to take away the freedom to marry? Yeah, I think there are at least two. Are there five? I don't think so—for the reasons I just said. That we created a climate that changed things—
Okay, I'm gonna push back again and say that I don't believe at all that Amy Coney Barrett, whom a few people have said has emerged as "the new swing vote" on the court, would protect it. I think she's a Christian ideologue. She was the consequential fifth vote in reversing Roe and I don't agree with you at all.
Well, that's your right. But I didn't finish my answer. I don't think there are five votes. So far, SCOTUS has taken cases that address not the question of direct freedom to marry but the question of whether such marriages, currently being legal, should be respected and treated. And in several of those cases, even some of the right-wing judges voted to affirm the respect for the freedom to marry once a couple is married—such as should they be able to change their names on a birth certificate. And so far, we've won those cases.
Also, bringing such a case [to challenge marriage equality] to SCOTUS doesn't happen overnight, and it hasn't happened so far. I'm sure the right-wing organizations are going to try to find a case [to push up to SCOTUS that would reverse gay marriage], if they're not already trying. There's been a push in state legislatures to get them to pass resolutions calling on the Supreme Court to reverse marriage equality.
To me, that's a sign that they know the weakness of their position. That's not how you change the law. State legislatures don't petition SCOTUS in the abstract by voting in a resolution. If they really believed they could reverse it, they would bring a case to push up to SCOTUS. They would try to get a state legislature to flout the victory we've won. They haven't yet. Does that mean they won't? No. But I think it shows that my answer is somewhat more right than what you're fearing.
Okay, I hope you're right!
But there's another piece I haven't mentioned yet that I want to make sure your readers hear. Which is that in addition to the two SCOTUS victories, a few years later, we persuaded Congress by a bipartisan vote to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which we'd filed first in 2010 as an organizing vehicle—we didn't even expect it to pass! And 12 years later, even after we'd won FTM, we passed that bill with a bipartisan vote in both chambers of Congress and Biden signed it in a joyous ceremony at the White House in December 2022.
Now, the law doesn’t establish FTM in all states, because it's not clear that Congress has the power to do that. Marriage is a state-law question. What the act does say is that any couple who is legally married in any state, or abroad for that matter, must have their marriage respected by all 50 states and the federal govenrment. So even in the worst-case scenario of SCOTUS overturning FTM, it would mean that maybe some states would decline to marry same-sex couples...but those couples could go to Georgia,New York, Iowa, California, etc., get legally married and then come back home and their state would have to respect their marriage.
So in other words, we have a 90 percent safeguard even against the worst-case scenario. So why should we spend our time and energy demoralizing ourselves with bad what-ifs?
OK. Let me ask you two more questions. One, which is recapping what we talked about above: If you exhorted someone reading this interview right now to do three things today, what would they be?
Like I said, pick an outrage you're most alarmed about or a community you care most about, find an organization that works in that arena, look at the action steps they have on their website or sign up with them to be part of one of their actions, and do something—ideally with others. That will make you feel good, it will contribute to the sum total of getting things done, and it will hopefully empower you to take the next step.
Number two: Find a candidate or candidates that you can support in the races leading up to the congressional midterms, and get involved. And if you're in too deep red a territory, then put pressure on the Republicans. Call them out, shame them, write them a letter.
Either way, no false equivalents [between Republicans and Democrats] or "I don't like any of them," etc. Elections are binary choices—it's one or the other. And in this case, it's very clear that Democrats are better even if they're not your ideal.
You raise a really important point. We know that a piece of why Trump won this time was because of people just not voting, whether because of their feelings about Gaza or about corporate Democrats or about feeling “meh” about Kamala Harris, who was rather foisted on us at the last minute without reflecting the people’s will that comes out of a true primary process. I know some of those people and felt at times like I wanted to strangle them but didn't know how to bring them around to the idea of there being a lesser of two evils. How do you?
Don't spend all your time on the most obstinate. Go find the others. Make sure everyone you know otherwise voted. Also, maybe post-election some are ready to take action who weren't before the election.
OK. And what's your third thing?
Let me think. I mean, the first two were so robust and good.
[I laugh] They are!
A third would be to take care of yourself. By that, I mean don't wallow in all the bad. Don't allow them to demoralize you. If you are feeling overwhelmed, take a break from cable TV or reading the news. People should stay informed but not in a constant state of anxiety and misery. Allow yourself to breathe. And by taking some of the actions I just mentioned, you will feel empowered and better. Not that it will make everything better, but you'll feel better, which is part of sustaining yourself for the work ahead. We worked for decades on FTM. I wrote my thesis on why we should have the FTM in 1983! I spent 32 years working with others to win it. And during that I had to sustain myself as well as others.
So don't surrender or obey in advance or make it easy for Trump and the others to do bad things or treat their actions as a fait accompli. They may try to do all bad things and they will do some, no doubt—they already have—but not everything will stick and some of it will backfire on them.
You just reminded me of something I wanted to ask you as a legal scholar, off the marriage issue: Particularly with this latest news of the Trump administration likely flouting the court order to turn the plane of immigrants being deported to El Salvador back around to the U.S., it seems very clear we are moving toward some kind of constitutional showdown, Trump versus the courts. It's been described as, "Well, the big one will be when they flout SCOTUS." Would you agree? Are all arrows pointing in that direction?
It's unacceptable for an elected official to disobey a lawful court order, and anyone that does must be challenged, resisted and punished.
Yeah, but they're laughing at what you just said!
This is the thing: They want you to believe that they can get away with whatever, and they're going to try and in some cases succeed in crossing red lines. But until then, don't be sitting around saying, "Oh, they're going to do it and there's nothing we can do." Why would we do that?
No, no, no, no, no. I'm not saying there's nothing we can do. But honestly outside gathering outside the courts and yelling, there's not a lot the average person can do about these judicial processes.
The single biggest thing people can do is to create a political climate that makes it difficult for the administration's enablers to keep going with them—and that encourage the judges and the courts to hold firm. And that encourages Congress to take action. Right now, that's not happening. The Republicans have capitulated and are shaming themselves. But one of the lessons of the FTM campaign is that no matter what people think they think, they can be brought to change what they think if you change the circumstances around them. So our job is to encourage those who need to stand up to stand up.
OK. And final question: How do you, when you're not doing this work, what does the rest of your life look like? How do you self-care?
I consider myself a very lucky person—I have a wonderful husband, great friends, a close family. I have interests, whether it's reading history or traveling or going to theater. Eating too much. And I allow myself to enjoy all those things.
Recently, I've struggled with allowing myself to enjoy the things I enjoy. It's this nagging feeling of "Don't downshift!" I'm joking slightly. I saw lots of friends and enjoyed myself over the weekend. But this other part of me is like, "No! Stay in the stress and do shit!"
I think the answer to that is, yes, we should all stay in it and do the work. But how we'll do that most effectively over time is by taking care of ourselves and others. Time spent doing that is not time away from action. It's sustaining action. •
For inquiries about movement advice or other things, Wolfson can be reached at evan@freedomtomarry.org.
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Thanks for reading and see you next week! xo Tim