Host its wonderful to be here today. We have so much to talk about so before we get started i thought it would be useful to share with people our format which is that i want to start a little bit by asking you about how you came to write the book and the experience of being embedded in and step back and talk about the frame of the book and what youre covering here and get back to the particular assertions you make in the book. You talk about. The book is called forcing the spring with the subtitle inside the fight for Marriage Equality and to get inside this fight as you say to fully embedded yourself with the team the activists and the lawyers and plaintiffs who challengechallenged californias proposition 8 which was the course the constitutional amendment that took away the marriage rights for samesex couples in california. For starters im interested in how this came to pass. He said at the end of the book you got interested in the story because you interviewed ted olson and reported on his coming out in favor of Marriage Equality. The story was published three months after the lawsuit was filed so im curious did you make the first phonecall to the team to cover the story . Guest yes i did. I picked up the paper one day and i saw the title of posing posing councils in the bush should be khobar litigation filed this lawsuit and i had known both men actually. I thought whatever the story is and ted olson this conservative icon came to embrace this cause. Theres got to be a fascinating story. So i was in between investigative projects and i picked up the phone and called and said i would love to do this story. In fact it was a little bit funny because the writers at the New York Times says its not exactly investigated. They said yeah i know but im fascinated by this and plus im the only person that ted olson will talk to because he hates the New York Times. [laughter] host he wanted to talk to obviously and he wrote the story and then do you make the first call about writing the books . Guest i did. Host who did you call . Guest i called the head of the American Foundation for a full Rights Foundation that was formed who filed this lawsuit eventually and ted and i said look im just, i kind of was i knew what the right book was to write. Every journalist thinks that they have a book and i was felp i would have to feel passionate and very just i will know it when i see it. I just knew it. I knew this was the book i wanted to write. I wanted to write it for so many reasons but mostly because this to me was a Fascinating Group of people. During the rep course of reporting the story i have course got to know the four plaintiffs at the heart of a lawsuit and i was captivated. I wanted to find out what would happen to them and this was as you know, this was a controversial strategy to take this to the Supreme Court. They could wind up heroes or they could wind up goats. Host i was going to ask you how much did you know about Bible College lgbt transsexual transgender. Had you reported on the Civil Rights Movement before . Will kind of reporting had you done . I had done a lot of legal reporting. Bush v. Gore in the background for the Washington Post with a Supreme Court justice picked by george bush so i had written about constitutional law but not specifically about this issue except to the extent that i covered for state legislatures and then everyone civil unions would come up. This was unions that legislation would come up in each of them and this was probably in the early 2000s. Its funny to think today that that was very controversial in these legislatures. I covered these legislative battles but certainly not the landmark cases that you are involved in. Host and you apart from the cases what kind of experience you to have with the lgbt civil rights organizations that have been leading lgbt civil rights . Guest to the extent that i covered the debates for several unions and talk to folks in the movement about that but over the course the last five years i got to know many of the leaders from cleve jones to mary benanado and mary filed the first case in massachusetts. Host did you spend a lot of time talking to mary . Guest not as much as i would have liked. I thought she challenged the doma as well as edie windsors lawyer and i thought as i was watching those cases moving along simultaneously with the case that hers would be the one that the Supreme Court chosen it didnt turn out that way. Host you talk to mary bonanno a couple of times. We will talk about that mourned couple of minutes. You talked in the book that you had an unfettered access to the plaintiffs to their lawyers to chad griffin has started the organization American Foundation for equal rights and now is the head of the Human Rights Campaign which is the largest lgbt political advocacy group. That must have been incredibly interesting. These fly on the wall stories and there are many things in your accounting that i found interesting. I know you were on Conference Calls with them and you go walk in and out of lawyers meetings. You were in the plaintiffplaintiff s homes and got to know them quite well. Did you have meals with them . Did you have drinks with them . Guest i was with them for everything that they did so for instance the trial. I arrived in San Francisco and took my Vacation Time at the New York Times to be in these rooms so i probably arrived i would guess eight or nine days before the trial is everybody was getting ready. What is kind of funny is i would go from room to room as the lawyers were talking to witnesses and back to the political room where chad griffin was milking this Huge Campaign that was going to be run in conjunction with this lawsuit. So whats interesting to me now as they are reading this book is they are finding out things that they didnt because i felt they were crossing from rim room to room. Host let me ask you. As any litigator knows when ive been involved with trials its a very intense experience and having the impression reading the book you are part of that intensity that you felt it and you lived with it and there was a kind of breathlessness to the experience. I wonder if that is certain point he felt part of the team and however you felt did you think that the other side you in some eyes as part of the team since you have these Close Relationships you developed with them . Guest i think whats interesting about being a journalist in this kind of situation is that talent i guess is to try to disappear so that people dont really notice that you were in the room. You know there are scenes in this book that people love and there are scenes that they probably say well i wish it wasnt there in that particular moment but i did kind of just disappear and i would show up and over five years to drive to court with people and i would drive to every court battle and id be in the car with the four plaintiffs. Everybody was sitting around and waiting for decisions and we were having coffee or pastries or eating way too much chocolate. I am an observer and a chronicler of what they did. Host lets step back. The subtitle of the book is inside the fight for Marriage Equality and then at the end you have this nice section where you talk about how you got interested in writing the book and you say that you describe the book as giving an insider account of this chapter in the nations civil rights history on Marriage Equality and i guess the book struck me as being Something Different from that as primarily a story about a more limited and with not so wellrounded story not in the sense that it develops the proMarriage Equality arguments more than the arguments against. You explain that in the book of really more that the book focuses on a small group of people. Very wellconnected very prominent but a small group of people that offers are largely although not entirely uncritical take on their efforts to seek marriage rights through a highprofile case. So im having a hard time squaring the inside the fight for Marriage Equality and the account of this chapter in our nations history from the beginning of the prop 8 lawsuit until just after the Supreme Court struck down doma. Tell me about that. Guest let me say an upfront way that many people to get to the point in history that i chose to write about so this is one chapter in a much larger narrative but its an important chapter in my mind because its the chapter about when some people in the movement decided to take the cause of Marriage Equality to the United StatesSupreme Court. Thats what i chose to write about and im gratified the New York Times called it a stunningly intimate story. That is what i set out to do. I was fascinated and i wanted to know what would it feel like to be in major civil rights litigation case one that was incredibly highprofile and controversial. What did that feel like . What was the judge thinking as he was considering evidence . To judge as it turns one of the maids many crazy twists in the story turned out to be. Ultimately what ive really wanted to convey is what does it feel like to want something that everybody else has and be told you cant have it. Host that is something that absolutely comes across in the book and i think you talk compelling way about the two couples the four plaintiffs whose suit challenged proposition 8. To get to ask it another way it seems to me that you tell that story of this group and their litigation very well. That story doesnt seem to me to be an account of this chapter in a nascent civil rights history in the sense both leaving aside what came before and we can get to that but even what was going on at the time in terms of people making claims for Marriage Equality. Guest what do you mean . Host i guess what i mean is there was this lawsuit. There was litigation around the country im sure you know and maybe we can talk about what was happening right before the prop 8 lawsuit was filed. Im sure you know this but to share with their listeners. Several months before gay and advocates and defenders have filed a lawsuit challenging the federal defense of marriage act and it particular challenge of the law on the grounds that the federal government was refusing to recognize the valid marriages of many couples and the harm that was causing. Even and all his Public Education market in rolling out for years but the other thing was several months before the iowa Supreme Court recognized the right to marry. There were three stays poised on the verge and the legislature granting the right to marry. Guest i did talk about that. Host you do talk about that briefly but it seems like a sliver of very interesting sliver but just a chapter of our nations civil rights history. Guest well look i think there was a lot going on but one of the interestiinteresti ng things that ive learned of course in writing this book is married or not a as we said is the first person to pilot a state lawsuit and mary told me when she filed in the massachusetts case there were a lot of people in the Lgbt Community that were opposed and thought she should not do that. It was too risky and when the doma litigation was filed both mary and rob are kaplan who was the lawyer who ended up taking e. Windsors case in the successful challenge of doma to the court both of them said there were parts of the Lgbt Community that thought this was not the federal courts were not fighting this as a state legislators and state courts. And it was a very real concern. I talk about this in the chapter where the group who files the proposition 8 lawsuit which that was so much more controversial than the doma lawsuit because the doma lawsuit was asking for less. It was asking for recognition of the legality so even that was controversial. When the proposition 8 case was filed john davis was invited to a large ad Robin Michelle reiners and rob writer who attracted a lot of the funding for the lawsuit and was a personal friend and an architect of the lawsuit. He felt like the conversation was disrespectful and it was sort of ignorant of the fact that many people had lot of it the idea of a federal lawsuit was hardly new. It was not new and facts as you know because you were with small small paul smith in the lawrence case one of the landmark cases that predated this litigation that im writing about and it struck down laws. Paul said ted wilson approached him as a potential cocounsel in the proposition case. He too had thought of this after he had won the lawrence case. Maybe there should be a federal lawsuit and we have to be able to get married and he taught to Justice Kennedy and Justice Kennedy wrote lawrence and was considered a swing vote on all these issues. He said he was told by these clerks that its a big job and Justice Kennedy is beautiful flowing opinion in the lawrence case didnt necessarily mean that the state would criminalize the behavior. Host you describe the book and i will just read this any say in the book it would be an incredibly bold the movement was made up of a constellation of established groups fighting for years for equal rights. A federal lawsuit with completely up and the statebystate strategy the states have been pursuing and then you go on to say at the time they were just two states that allowed same sex marriage and you said chad in broad shared a willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom wisdom and you go on later to talk about or earlier in the book to talk about chad starting a revolution. I guess against the framing of the book question for a moment it seems to me that this story is happening alongside so much other work. That work either gets largely dismissed and write about the gay establishment as being very conservative and pushing against this bold idea and you mentioned mary granato and most people think of her as the architect of the legal strategy. Guest i love mary but. Host its not so much whom you focused on as really asking you about your claim that this is a chapter which is a sliver. Its an important piece but its just a piece of the nations civil rights struggle so i wonder about that claim in the chapter. Guest Supreme Court cases are inherently interesting. There have been really beautiful books written about the Larger Movement and the history of the movement and im sure there will be many more and i think the more books that are written about the subject the better. I think a lot of americans who havent really made up their mind can read these books and decide what they want to think about this issue. I think the more books the better. Host i totally agree with you and again i want to stress i have learned things from this book and found it very interesting. What i worry about is that people pick up a book that says inside the fight for Marriage Equality and think they are reading out book about the fight for Marriage Equality when what theyre really reading about is chad olson and bringing a lawsuit that ultimately did not achieve their goal and as somebody says really risk the crown jewel of the movement. They brought a risky lawsuit and it doesnt seem to me that the book takes the criticism very seriously. Guest i respectfully disagree. When im talking about John Davidson feeling disrespected thing we are going to file a federal lawsuit. I talk about it wasnt that anybody disagreed with the goal with the end goal. Everybody wanted to see that happen in everybody understood how important would need if the Supreme Court were to validate this community and its full equality. Everybody wanted that and the question was in the title actually sort of speaks to those change was coming. The country was moving. Demographically young people just dont get it. They dont understand why this is even an issue. Why gay and lesbian shouldnt be able to marry. The question was how fast the change was coming. Its an important question and i think what really concerns a lot of people not just about the case but the doma litigation was that they had to remember the terrible set back that occurred when the Supreme Court handed down the decision and the decision upheld the law. What happened was it was just a terrible setback. It was used as a precedent for all sorts of other things. Host absolutely in them what happened was there was a slow building efforts of people wanted Marriage Equality and in the 1970s people were bringing Marriage Equality suits when the law was really bad. The people who grew up with these issues for a long time developed a strategy but let me ask you this. You start the book and you say this is how a revolution begins. It begins and i will skip ahead. A seamstress named rosa parks refuses to give seat on the book in the segregated south and in the story begins with the handsome 35yearold political consultant named chad griffin in his suite at the st. Francis hotel on Election Night in 2008. Before i ask you about chad i just have to ask you its not a secret that rosa parks didnt start a revolution