The federal case, geoff zarillo and paul katano. There are righights tha come along. The justices declined to rule and therefore upheld al ban. Our straight friends are getting married. The sky has not fallen in. I spoke to the proposition 8 challengers in washington, d. C. In a minute, you will hear from chris and sandy. But first, my interview with the men. They have been a couple since 1998 and married last year. Was there a moment for a series or a series of moments where you realized that you were not just disappointed people, as a lot of people were in california after prop 8, but ready to join the fight, ready to put the bit in your teeth and actually take this to court . Your proposition 8 hurt. It hurt before it passed because the propaganda took a shift and the shift was to utilize this idea that children would be harmed, the institution of marriage would be harmed, heterosexual couples would no longer get married if you were to allow Marriage Equality. It was the propaganda that was filled with lies and misrepresentations of what our love represents that really lit the fire for us. Before prop 8 passed, because we thought this cannot happen in california. But we saw that the tactics of t we saw the attack ads against us and prop 8 passed. It was really devastating. And we just stood up. I mean we stood up and said, this is enough. Like we cant go door to door and lobby our neighbors for our rights any longer. We cant knock on the door and say please read the constitution because it applies to me as well. We had to stand up and say, the law is black and white. We are going to lean on the law. Once a person comes out to themselves, to their friends, whatever, that arrival at that place, hasnt that always in our history been accompanied by the married . Absolutely. Prop 8, and being involved in this case for paul and i, at the time, we had been together for over eight years. It sort of exposed a little weakness in our own relationship because we really thought, okay. Yeah, it would be nice to be married, but thats not for us. We are not allowed to do that. And i think when prop 8 came to be, it woke us up and said, wow. You know, this really hurts when people talk about us this way or it really, you know, who are they to say these things about our relationship . You know, we have six nieces and nephews. We are the cool uncles. We are not going to hurt any children. We are not going to recruit any children. So this prop 8 bout initiative that was out in california, it really made us think about who we were and where our relationship was ultimately going to go in this process of coming out, you know, when you see, when you are gay and lesbian, you have these moments in your everyday life where you have to come out every day, whether its at the Grocery Store or the bank or a hotel desk. These are moments that you learn to cope and you learn to, oh, god, do i want to make this person uncomfor theable by telling them i want a kingsize bed for me and my partner, not my Business Partner but my life partner. This is ongoing circle of coping and coming out. But ongoing, also, is the journey of millions of people, some you know, some you dont, who were perfectly happy with you making a domestic arrangement, working it out, filling in some of the legal blanks through other means, not marriage, and that was fine. They didnt hate you. They were happy with the way things were, that you couldnt get married because marriage was an institution that was reserved for certain people and not you. Well, you know, its interesting that there was this idea of redefining what marriage means. And through our entire case, we never redefined marriage. For us, it was a universal story of love. Right . You fall in love. You want to get married. Thats someone everyone can touch on their lives. All we wanted was the right to marry because of the rights that come with it. And many times, we encountered the opinion zilings that said, no. You dont deserve those rights because of some moral or maybe a religious obstacle to that, a barrier that we had to break through. And we always said that the ceremonous rights that come along with that, that we would spell rites, the rites of marriage that some people want to protect is fine by us. We are not trying to impose our beliefs or our lives or anything on those rites of marriage but there are rights marriage that come along with marriage as well. Thats critical to us. Thats what benefits our lives. Geoff and i are together over 13 years. We have a home. If god forbid something happened to us and we have met couples whos lives have been destroyed because of the rights that are prohibited them after one of them is in the hospital passes away. And i think when you relay those stories, when you talk about the human stories of people struggling against this barrier to equality that it really does allow people to say, okay. We live in a country where we could be neighbors. A fence between our homes is the constitution. We dont ever have to agree if your rights of marriage are something that are sack rimonous to you and that you really want to hold on to and believe it is your definition, thats fine. Thats absolutely acceptable to us. But on the other side of it, this fence, is the constitution that says that we all should be treated equally, that the 14th amendment protection all merges. So disagreeing with it is perfectly acceptable. But what we believe is you cant enact law based on some moral or religious bias against someone else. Country. I think you get i mean, to distill your question down to this basic argument of separate but equal, and thats really what the question is about you can have these rights, but you just cant have this part of it. You cant have that word. Well, you know, you can back in the 60s, you can have that water but you just cant drink it from the same water fountain as me. So, its the whole thing of, well, you can have it, but you cant have it. So, it really has to be the whole thing. Well, that word, the very word, and i guess all of the associations and emotions that cluster around it ended up being a big part of this argument. Didnt it . That word has global recognition. Wherever i go in the world, if i bring paul with me, introduce him as my husband, they know exactly what that means. They know exactly hour our relationship is defined. Now, going somewhere and introducing him as my partner or my boyfriend, partner is a very confusing word. If i say this is paul and he is my husband, and someone says, someone may have an internal bias to that, then thats their problem at that moment. Thats not our problem at that moment. No other words need to be said other than this is paul, and et cetera my husband. Because i keep hearing that thats a big hangup. The word. Its huge. We will let you do all of those things, inheritance, taxes, joint returns, hospital visits, the whole deal, the whole shabang. Just dont call it marriage. You dont really celebrate your Domestic Partnership date. It sounds like a more of a business legal contract than actually a contract of love and respect and liberty. And the word marriage is defined so many different ways for so many different people. But ultimately, it allows protections, and it allows access to a language so that we can associate with each other in a specific way. And it also allows us to open and broaden that and allow us to associate with the world in a way thats universal and understood. And when you say to someone, oh, you can have this, but not that, it ultimately is telling you that you are separate and unequally in a way. We were fighting federally because we wanted to make sure if we had to move to a different protected. We are at about 45, 46, 47 of americans living in states where anybody can get married. Uhhuh. How did this happen so fast . The momentum is undeniable right now. Decades and decades of work have gone in to bringing the idea of being socially acceptable, bringing the idea of coming out in your home and your school and your church and saying, you know, accept me for who i am. If you dont, its a reflex on you not me because i am living my truth and the truth is the way that brings us this collect collective voice. And that collective voices is overwhelming right now. I think peoples personal stories, strengths and strength of the network has come from so many people before us. How long have you been married now . We are coming up on a year. Three weeks will be a year that we were married. Wow. And they said it wouldnt last. This will. California. Is there Something Different about the life that goes on in that house that you have shared together for a long time now that you are married . You know, its funny, since being married, everyone asks us the question does i do really matter that much . But that day came, and you thought, wow. We worked so hard for this and we dreamed about this moment. Will it change everything . And it changed nothing in our lives because we are already like a married couple, where we live, our nieces and nephews call us the old married couple already. But it changed everything in that moment. Everything. Why . Why do you say that . It lifted this incredible weight of harm that we felt and that we suppressed for so many years. And we were able to finally, look at each other and feel equal not only in our home but to our society and in our state and in our country and it also brought this weight of obligation to make sure that everyone like us across the country can feel like us that day and that moment. The amazing thing is our straight friends are still getting married. Our straight friends are still having children. They havent said, wow, paul and geoff got married. Thats it. We are not getting married. The sky has not fallen in. Before not only strength ended our relationships and our community did but the institution of marriage as a whole has been strengthened by allowing gays and lesbian s to be part of it. But is ththis is an unusual marriage not in the way that people assume that i am saying that but that there is actually a stake for people who dont know you never even seen you before. Nobody cares if my marriage falls apart except people who know me. A lot of people are going to be watching your marriage. I would say that equal access to marriage means equal access to divorce as well for people. I mean people come together and they marry and for whatever reason, if marriage doesnt work out, it doesnt work out. But we had to fight our entire lives to say, i do. There is a commitment level there that we want to really bring a success ratio to this institution of marriage. Listen, weve had friends who are married and, you know, get divorced. Its part of the normalcy of life as human beings, we all live the same way and thats what quality really brings to the titles. It brings an understanding to the normalcy of how things are supposed to be versus putting something off into a different category, building a if he knew around, you know, gay marriages to see whether or not they work or not. I have been speaking to the two men who fought for Marriage Equality in the battle over proposition 8. Next, we will hear from the two women plaintiffs in the case. Its a chilling and draconian sentence. It simply cannot stand. This trial was a sham. They are truth seekers. All they really wanna do is find out whats happening, so they can tell people. Governments around the world all united to condemn this. As you can see, its still a very much volatile situation. The government is prepared to carry out mass array. If you want free press in the new democracy, let the journalists live. This week, our guests are the two couples who successfully challenge the californias ban on samesex marriage. Before the break, you heard from the two men. Now, my interview with chris perry and sandy steer. Right after the texas sodomy case, titime magazine came ou with two versions of their cover showing two very squared away, bushy looking gay couples and gay women. The headline was is marriage next . And i thought, wow. I hadnt even thought about it. Had you been thinking about it, chris . No. Actually, i think Marriage Equality seemed like a much more recent phenomenon although, of course, its not. The lawrence case is an example of sort of the worst kind of lgbt discrimination where someone is criminalized for their behavior or who they are. Instead of that which i think we are so fortunate to have that over with, we have moved to a time when we are talking about something as positive as b but i remember just before lawrence talking to activists, people involved with hrc empty the legal landscape and people said marriage not on our radar screen. Lets talk about equality first. Was the possibility of marriage marriage . Its all about having the same options of everybody else. It isnt even whether or not you ever exercise that option. To be told by your government you dont even get to choose is so harmful. You grow up believing you are a second class citizen from the moment you recognize that you are gay or lesbian and until recently, you didnt think you ever would be equal. Marriage is the most significant decision you make as an adult. And if the governments telling you, sorry, when you decide to be with someone of the same sex, you dont get to be married. You will never be as good as everyone else, you are forever in the status of a child essentially in this child. Benefits of all kinds are delivered to couples, individuals through marriage. If that werent the case, then we could Say Something like, well, we want to reject that paradigm and go with a different one because it had so many bad there were so many bad chapters in history for women and other people with marriage, but when you look at what the institution does today, it delivers more than a thousand benefits to couples. If you tell the whole group of americans who pay taxes and do Everything Else they dont get to have those benefits, it is a powerful negative message and disappear. Sandy, was it a gradual think coming to the idea of marriage going a possibility of something you could have . For me, i think it was a little bit less so. I was married to a man for a number of years and had children with him before that marriage ended and i fell in love with kris. So marriage was something i always thought i had access to. I could not see a legitimate reason for us not to be given equal access to that right as anybody else. Well, that said of Life Experience actually heightens the contrast for you. Uhhuh. You had been married. Right. You knew what being married was about . I know all about marriage. You know, somebody once said to me, whats the difference between gay marriage and straight marriage and i said, well, there really isnt a difference. The difference is that is it working or is it not in your life . Do you love each other . Are you committed to each other . Gauge marriages, straight marriages have the same king he knows as anybody else. And i would say that with chris and i, we got married because we fell in love. And we want to have a family together like anybody else who gets married. Its just the same thing. Well, we are all similar age so we can remember the express it. You had to really think about what it would mean to make a federal case out of it. The scrutiny is intention. Its completely 100 worth it. I try and explain over and over again the difference between using the court system to resolve a problem between or the ballot box. The ballot box wasnt working for gays in this country only a few years ago. We are a minority. We are a significant minority. We will never be the majority. So ballot box measures on our rights, our civil rights, will never go well and so we were left with really settle for what the majority wants or challenge our states laws that ban us from getting married. And when you look at this way and you realiwhat harm its cau you, your family, your it kids and everyone else, its not that difficult of a choice anymore. You start to feel likely if i problem. Sandy, no hesitation . Not to get involved in the case certainly not and we felt strongly that after proposition 8 passed, it was terrible for california but it sent such a negative message to the children in our state that the they couldnt count on they couldnt count on the government to protect them if they are growing up gay in our state and in terms of our own involvement, we felt like we were at a good place in our lives to commit stoto Something Like that because we had solid stable careers, Stable Family life. Our children were growing up. I never once wished we hadnt done it, but it was certainly a major investment, far more than we anticipated but i would echo what chris said. It was very much worth it because we just never took our eye off of the prize and the california. Would you recommend to people you just meet to be petitioners in a major precedentsetting National Case . Sounds like a great idea. If you feel deeply passionate about an issue and you can see no other path forward, i think its a great option to exercise and again, you know, i have said i have never been a terribly patriotic person because i felt discriminated against my buyer life and it wasnt until we took prop 8 to federal court and i stood in that courthouse, i took an oath and gave testimony under the American Flag that i felt like an american for the first time because it was the first time i felt like i was able to express a grievance in a place that was established to resolve them and that i was getting the same access to that institution for that problem as anybody else and i have felt so excluded from other institutions. I never wanted to be in the military but if i had, i wouldnt have been able to be myself. I felt excluded from marriage. In so many places, i felt i shouldnt try to work there . Does it operate when you hear kris talk about a whole lifetime of associations, of assumptions that she would be excluded, barred, treated differently . Is it different for someone who comes out later in life . I think my experience is quite different. I did come out later, but coming out later causes a great deal of disappointment in a lot of people that you are close to because they have known you as differently and so i think i experienced the some of the rejection and the Emotional Trauma hater in life. I was an adult so its quite different. To me, thats the most important thing possible is that the work that we do sets that stage that some day, somebody gets to take it for granted. Roughly half of the population has Marriage Equality and it just seems like it happened in a flash, but people are still changing their minds. There are people who are wamping this now on television who are very unhappy about the fact that you could get married. So yes, Mission Accomplished for you guys. You can go and do your thing but half of the country wondering about it, unsure about it, unsure where it all leads. There is still amou lot of batt to be fought. Sloolt true en though more people support Marriage Equality, not everyone does port Marriage Equality. Not everyone ever will. We have a constitution to protect the people from the people. Thats what this country was founded on. The l i know this sandy and i want to do is upset or disrupt anybody else ever. We would never expect other people would stand up and be supportive. We just hope we dont disrupt or upset them. Said, it is important to come out. Harvey milk said it 30 years ago and was assassinated for being out. I think his legacy is very powerful in the sense that because he was out, he paid a huge price and i feel a burden and a responsibility to do that in my life. When the we come back, we will hear from the two couples about the future of marriage, theirs and everyones. 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Instead of destroying marriage, as people have predicted, could gay people be reviving it because they want it so bad . When you want something so hard, like paul said, when you fight for something so hard like marriage, we want to bring, hopefully, some security and stability to that. I dont know if thats necessarily our responsibility. I think our responsibility is to find the person that we love and to commit to that person and, hopefully, be part of an institution that can bring some type of pride to our community as well. You are embarking on something that already is in a lot of trouble in the case of marriage, a social institution that has been buffeted and under heavy wind for a while. Is it being changed by you . I think we make big changes in this country when we know its time. We de segregated schools. We have the loving case, many instances of bringing people together and bringing the country together because the laws that kept us apart were too negative and too hard on people. Its hard to go through change. Sandy and i are patient. We dont expect everybody to be where we are right now. But we do hope people can at least embrace that fairness and equality are fundamental principles and we are exercising our right to belong and not to be better than, not to be less than but to belong. Its also something that struck me as incredibly wonderful when we learned long after the trial was over, long after sandy and i had been married that chuck cooper, the lead counsel for the other side saw us get married on television. He couldnt the quote that i read was that he couldnt help but rejoice in our happiness and this is the person who brought the case all the way to the Supreme Court and argued in front of nine justices that we shouldnt be married. When he saw us get married, he couldnt help but rejoice in our happiness and that, i take, is a very powerful and important sign of progress because nobody led the effort more than mr. Cooper, and nobody understood better when it was over why sandy and i wanted to be married. I am thomas drayton. There is a tendency to downplay human rights in favor of commercial interests harsh realities of a world in crisis governments care about their reputation. Can roth, head of Human Rights Watch with adequate pressure you can stop anybodys abuse. Every saturday join us for exclusive, revealing, and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time. Talk to al jazeera only on Al Jazeera America the u. S. And United Nations are poised to call a ceasefire in gaza as israel vows to continue attacks on hamas. Hello. Wufrping the al jazeera news hour live from london. The white house has repeated the kelgs of aan attack
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