The biggest misconception is that most of my life is taken up with junk and scandals and alleged corruption. Most of the no because i even in d. C. 152nd sound bite. And nationally the United States government. Beset that tape to every ambassador in the world cannot to every president of every country in the world, sent it to the other propaganda arm of the u. S. Government. It ran on television. But this so many have contributed to it, too. And that is all part of it. I am not fazed by it. Washington d. C. , as long as it gives them some hope that some help. I dont care. [applause] i dont care. The wanted thank you so much for coming here tonight. I also wanted to give you this is actually a very precious object. I dont know if you have gotten one of these before, the National Press club coffee mug. I have two of them. Well, now you have triplets. They do so much for coming. We will be outside signing a book. Im sorry. Right over here signing a book. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] i want to start by thinking of a couple of people like the Concord Monitor for sponsoring this event a and red river theater in the venue to hold this is and i want to sink michael for making notice when you walked in and in joe will stick around so i hope you take advantage of that also to joe to talk about the main circuit of course, also coming tusis said you have read about this in the monitor but to talk about my experience with joe when i was at the monitor. And at some point during that time she decided she wanted to leave she got a nice offer from the st. Petersburg times but i have not struggled as much with that decision because she had such great loyalty because she had a wonderful time as a reporter and we were used to reporters moving onto larger papers but joe talked about this two or three times from the st. Petersburg times. In thin to a three years later after she won all kinds of awards for investigative reporting for the seat petersburg times and thought what did i think . Or should she stayed . She felt terribly loyal it have gotten too many Great Stories to take a job at the post a couple years after that she got an offer from the New York Times and she did not call me. And alonso way with a series for Vice President j. T. For investigative reporting with the Marriage Equality and i say that because all the time i have been in the news ever have seen civil rights move so fast that was just remarkable and my job is to ask questions to get the conversation going then we will turn that over to you. So why someone with a great job at the New York Times has time off. And i thought to myself however ted oulson this conservative that liberals love to hate because he of course had one bush v. Gore how he came to take this cause has to be a big story. I went to my editors and i said i know this is in my normal fare but im really interested, i would like to do it. Im between projects anyway and besides im the only person that ted oulson would talk to at the New York Times because he hates it. I had gotten to know him over the years. I covered bush v. Gore and covered the Washington Post on george bushs Supreme Court nominee so i got to go him nor. I also figured in this interesting when the cheney series. He was one of the few lawyers willing to stand up and tell cheney and his lawyer adding 10 that you cant go to the Supreme Court until the Supreme Court that they dont have any right to review your detainee policies and these people can even have lawyers. That was interesting to me because ted oulson was the only person who lost in that highranking Bush Administration official who lost someone. His wife was on board one of those flights. So i called ted and i said i wanted to do the story. I did the story and i couldnt let it go. It was a really audacious thing they were doing. It was a controversial thing that they did and there was a lot of people who believed at that time that the country was not ready and more importantly the Supreme Court wasnt ready. I describe in the book this lunch scene where they planned this lawsuit in secret and they finally kind of let in, they invited some of the lawyers Supreme Court lawyers who had been wished working on this issue for many years. They kind of let them in on the plan. It was like, it was that rob reiners house. Rob reiner was part of this group that brought this lawsuit. He was instrumental in getting the funding to bring the lawsu lawsuit. The lawyers were like, you dont have two count to five and 1. 1 of the lawyers threw down his dossier on the dining room table and said you know, if you do this, if you go forward with this we are going to this dossier on ted olson and every conservative cause he has ever champion is going to make made public. We will take it to the media. The guy who was the architect of all of us a Young Political consultant whose name is chad griffin, hes now ahead of the Human Rights Campaign and the Largest Group in the world but at that time he was operated in hollywood. His Business Partner christina, they were the ones that came up with this idea said do it. Thats great because of someone like this as conservative as ted olson is willing to take this cause on, that has the potential to change the conversation. So anyhow once i started following this i wanted to know. I got to know the four plaintiffs at the heart of the book and the lawsuit and i wanted to know how this will turn out for them. How in the world did you ge get one of the Amazing Things about the book is how close then you are with all the major characters in the book. How did you get that access . I went to them after i had done the story and i said you know, writing a book is scary to be honest. You know its a big endeavor so i set the bar really high. Thinking they would probably say no and then i would kind of be off the hook. Are you still having sorry about that. So anyhow is this better . Okay. We could do that. Thats much better, yes. I forgot where we were. How did i get the access . I went to them and i said look i would really like to do this book. I would like to follow it, the case all the way through but you would have i would have to be in the room. I would have to be there as a lawyer debating strategy. I would have to be with the plaintiffs as they wake up and go to court and be in the political courtroom. This case is litigation but it was also this accompanying Public Education campaign and a political campaign. I want to be in the war room while my colleagues are being pitched on stories. I thought that they would say no because its a kind of a crazy thing. Many of you are lawyers are out there and no privilege can be waived. The lawyer client privilege. If someone knew i was in the midst of all this. We didnt really announce the book. We didnt do a big fanfare announcement and the only condition was that i was not going to publish before the case had resolved itself. That was it. That was the only condition. Nobody had the right to preview or detail so you sort of ask yourself, why did these people agree to that . The answer is actually if you think back on it now it looks like and of course you know they were there with some critique of the book that is the greater glory of this group about the case but if you go back at the time there were only two states that allowed Marriage Equality. The majority of the country was opposed. So these guys could have been the people that invited me a reporter and a film crew because theres also an hbo documentary that came out today and to document how through sheer hubris and ignorance they set back the movement by losing the Supreme Court. No one had any idea how this would turn out but you know the lesson of harvey milk, harvey milk was the San Francisco and i hope somebody saw the movie milk, but harvey milk last thing was come out and tell your story. Telling your story matters. Telling your story can change minds. They believed and they agree to all of this because because they believed that people could get to know the four plaintiffs in that they could see what they went through over the course of these five years that win years that win or lose it would educate people. Win or lose it would move people and make them see this issue in a different light. How hard was it for the attorneys to choose the plaintiffs in the case . Normally you think people want to get married and they hire a firm. This idea was the opposite. You have essentially chad griffin sitting and watching the election returns come in on Election Night and barack obama makes history. Hes the first africanamerican president elected. Chad is a democrat and he wants to celebrate buddies watching on his computer screen as the prop aids numbers roll in. Propositon eight was the Voter Initiative to strip and out there with right to marry in california. They briefly enjoy the ride after the california Supreme Court said it was a matter of state constitutions of the voters asked to change the constitution and they did. And so a few days later chad and his partner christina and their friends who happen to be Robin Michelle reiner are sitting at the polo lounge in hollywood which is a very meet and greet place and they are talking about what are we going to do . If we cant win in california, we cant win here where can we possibly when . By circumstance a friend of the reiner stopped by and heard but they were talking about password says he really ought to talk to a friend of mine. My exbrotherinlaw actually is a constitutional lawyer and i think he would be on your side in this. They said who is that . Well, ted olson. Rob reiner, his jaw dropped and he was with Vice President gore when bush v. Gore was decided. They both drove down to the Supreme Court and it was just this terrible light for them but they immediately kind of saw that this had gamechanging potential to have someone like ted championing this cause. It had the potential to turn it from what had been a partisan fight into a debate about civil rights. So they then set out to bio. Ted had wanted a different kind. He had a specific set of criteria. He wanted a bookstore owner. He wanted a cop and i forget what the other two, they wanted six altogether because they figured out the opposition turned up something in somebodys background they wanted to have more. He didnt want any children. He thought that was a complicating kind of factor, which is of course really ironic because if any of you have followed this when Justice Kennedy, when these cases by mcgough to the Supreme Court it was the kit thats Justice Kennedy was focused on. What about the 40,000 children of couples in california . Arent they part of the story . I that part of the argument . Why shouldnt they have the same kind of familys . But ted didnt want that so anyhow they went on this they have elaborate i describe in the book where they were telling people they were doing a Public Education campaign and they did a casting call. They were running out of time and when they found chris and sandy, chris perry and are now wife sandy stier, chris worked for rob, worked for a state agency that rob reiner helped to fund her Ballot Initiative he had done for chad. They asked them to do it. They have four teenage boys and they said yes and they found to their realtor actually, chads realtor suggested them. How about the people you couldnt talk to . How did he represent them fairly and about . Not the people you couldnt talk to but the people you didnt get to spend this much time with as you did with the plaintiffs in the lawyers . Yeah so my biggest challenge was i went to the lawyer on the other side jack cooper and asked him, told him i was doing a book and told him right at the beginning and asked him can i hang out in your and he said never, thats not going to happen but he did promise me he was a down with me after the case had resolved itself and he would explain everything that he was doing. So i did. I spent hours and hours interviewing him about what he was thinking and what he was doing. Its very gratifying to me because look, these are tough issues. And i didnt want to write a book that didnt fairly represents the arguments on the other side. I didnt want i didnt want to do that because im a journalist and i want to be fair but also because people are changing their minds on this issue. You used to have as i said when i started doing this book the majority of the country was supposed. Today the clear majority of the country is in favor. And so you know one of the lessons about this and it comes up again and again in the book is people demonize the other side. I mean it isnt effective. It doesnt change peoples minds so i was really grateful to chuck for explaining what he was thinking and his reasonings. I was particularly grateful that he thinks at the end of the day he got a fair shake from me than any of the coverage of this case over five years yet its still very clearly about two couples who are in love and you want to get married. Theres no question that the book is told from their point of view but you know i felt that i had done my job. He felt that i had treated him with respect. What was the lowest point . There were a lot. This was such up and down, upanddown kind of thing over five years. No one thought it would take that long. They didnt even know there was going to be a child. One of the really tough moments was i was there with them when we drove to court the first day of the trial and everything that is sort of sacred in america went on trial during these remarkable weeks. The history of marriage, the history of discrimination in this country, the science of sexuality, all of these issues that had never been really put to trial essentially. Not in a federal court. It was a very unusual thing. Most of these cases are argued on does the constitution say this or doesnt it say its . On the first day everybody was so nervous and that morning chris was sort of wiping the kitchen counter kind of furiously and i kind of looked at her and she said you know this i can control. Everything else is they are for ordinary people. One day you are two moms raising four kids or in jeffs case. He manages a Movie Theater and paul is a fitness instructor. The next day you are plaintiffs in a major civil rights case stepping outside the van and theres a crush of cameras and crowds and there are signs and protesters and its scary. So you wade through all of this and you get into a freight elevator and go up to kind of a holding area. The u. S. Marshal marshall comes in and says you know if you get any kind of threats, it doesnt have to be death bad but anything let us know because thats our job. Their office looked stricken. Sandy and chris looked at each other and all they could think about was their four boys. They were harassed and the boys were targeted by callers who called Spencer Elliott told me he was doing his homework and a caller kept calling and calling him basically saying things like your moms are going to burn in hell and these terrible things. People would find them on facebook and say you dont have to be all right with this. What they werent all right with was the assumption that somehow they didnt have a loving great family and both of those boys were star pupils, really welladjusted kids. But that was really tough. The other thing that was really tough was waiting for to see whether the Supreme Court would grant the case. What that means is agreed to review the case. They want the Federal District court level. They won on appeal but they wanted the case to go to the Supreme Court even though that is counterintuitive. Why would you want the Supreme Court to review something that you want but that was the whole point of this to take it to the highest court in the land. So we would gather, the court has something called conferences and they basically put out a list and they say we could decide any of these cases today. We would gather and everybody would furiously go to scotusblog and that it was like okay its not today. At one point chris said grade my hair looks like you know not nice. He didnt use that word, but you know they kept trying to get their boys if the Supreme Court denied cert and did not take the case they would be getting married right away. They want to be the first to be married in the state. That was part of the a Public Education campaign component and so they would have to send out save the dates and say to your family are not getting married. There was a lot of ups and downs for these guys over the course of it and also listening, even the archivists listening and i describe about what they are feeling and thinking as the justices are debating. And talking about at one point Justice Scalia talks about well you know i will tell you, he says to cooper i will tell you one reason why its rational for a state to discriminate and its oh so can adopt. There is Spencer Elliott and just saying the children of a couple and they werent adopted. They were in vitro but it was just, i tried very hard in the book, i wanted people to come away from this really understanding the legal arguments, really getting, if you are into, i had this thought if you are into legal thrillers i wanted you to read it without reason and to watch the best lawyers of their generation put together a major civil rights case. I also wanted always to try to find a way back to the personal areas i talk a lot about for instance some of the lawyers in the case and the special burden that they carried with them. There is a wonderful moment where they have their lawyer hats on all day and they put the witness and the witness was there to talk about stigma and what he was there to talk about was how discrimination affects people and place out in their everyday life. The lawyers got them ready and everybody kind of testifies and everybody went to a bar after court and i went with them. They were sitting there and one of the young lawyer said it was like listening, she tells the others there are, it was like being on a therapists couch. I had to have my lawyers have gone but then listening to him talk about how stigma makes people feel, the kind of diminished sense of possibility that people live with when they are part of a group that is hated and discriminated against. And she said i couldnt even call my wife. This young lawyer had married her wife in california when this was possible. She said i couldnt could call my wife, wife because, and then the expert who was also said because it felt like a word reserved for other people. She said yeah, it did and then they talked about how we have to own that language. That was where, so you sort of get to hear all of this evidence but also have this almost, like a cinematic way of telling the story. So one of the things you do in the book is really give a lot of Background Information about olson. Could you talk a little bit about the contrast between the lawyers in and their approach to lawyering . E, so i describe it in the book this way. Ted is like a classical pianist who face with some particularly difficult concerto practices over and over and over again until he has this metronomic kind of precision. David is like a chess player like always in search of the unexpected. So they approach getting ready very differently. I think what makes david such an effective trial lawyer if he doesnt have a script. He doesnt go in and have a script. At one point he is questioning a witness and something, it was a witness put on by the other side. He is crossexamining him and the guy said something about, he was questioning the expert report that he prepared in the guy said Something Like well its my report. Its my report and it was just something about the way the guy said it and he said, he said well how many of the experts that you list in your report how many of them actually did you find on your own . And he said well he was dancing around it, circle them. He hands them this piece of paper and its excruciating to hear the scratches of the pencil making circle after circle after circle of the ones that the lawyers had told him versus the ones he had found on his own. Thats the kind of lawyer he is. Ted is, i mean he is an amazing advocate in the sense that he is always thinking like threedimensional chess. During the trial he was constantly looking at well do we have everything in the record that we will need on appeal because for those of you that dont know, you dont get to put on new evidence or call and a new witnesses once the case is decided at the trial level. The judges above just review the record. So he was always thinking kind of in terms of how well this sort of, mostly how will this fall on Justice Kennedy. Both sides, chuck cooper told me the same thing. That everybody was focused on Justice Kennedy in making sure that they were making arguments that would have an ultimate appeal to him. In fact when i describe this early on, the lawyers came up with a list of terms from Justice Kennedy had offered two other major decision lawrence v. Texas in a case called rumored v. Colorado. They pulled phrases about Human Dignity and all the phrases that he used. Not just for their legal arguments that they may. They used them of course they are but they gave them to chad griffins political war room in every press release and every statement that they made contain that language as well. Those lawyers know the Supreme Court justices. As kennedy the only one . Well i think look, david at different times said he was sure they were going to get all not. Nobody thought that. I was just bravado and for the headlines. But i think everybody considered Justice Kennedy is going. This is yet to be decided because for those of you that dont know the court ultimately decided this was essentially allowing marriages to resume in california. Its a huge victory but not the 50 state decision that they hoped for. And at one point, but anyway did that answer your question . I kind of trailed off there at the end there, sorry. At this point why dont we turn it over to the audience and see what questions they have about this issue . Can you tell us about the judge . Guests. Judge walker. Judge walker is remarkable. He talked to me to the book which i was very appreciative of and he had, he has a very interesting story. He himself is and was not closeted but never had made a public announcement about it. He talks about how he grew up thinking and we talked a little bit early about this diminished sense of possibility. He thought i could never get a man and he reached the pinnacle of my career. That is what he thought. And so he tried to date women. He was particularly moved by a young boy which was the most touching of all of the trial who testified about how his parents upon learning he was forced him to attend what was called reparative therapy. Which is widely now condemned by every major group that forced him to attend this. It was so hard for him. He thought of killing himself and he finally ran away from home and he testified about how he struggled. He was alone and he finally rebuilt his life and found a good job. He works for the Denver Police department and as he is talking judge walker sort of transported back in time and he told me the story about how he so didnt want to be gay that he underwent a former prepared a therapy himself. And that the doctor that he saw told him that because he had never acted out and had never had sex with a man he was not gay and he pronounced him cured. Judge walker were they wanted to believe that was true. He told me at about the same time he saw his parents. They were kind of a close family and somehow they had a few drinks and the conversation got around to their sex life. They were remarkably candid. They had their troubles in this area. Judge walker said that would have been the time for me to say well i have had my troubles in this area too because i am gay but what he said to me was, but i didnt say that because i didnt want to be one of those people. Those people were deviants. That is how homosexuality was characterized. It was a mental disorder. Its hard to imagine today but he gets this case. He is literally leaping through the cases that are dropped off by the clerk and hes leafing through it all and he says is suing the governor of california and because oh no, and not because i thought when he told me the story that it was because he was going to say my personal life is now going to become an issue. That nell, he actually does want to retire and he was pretty sure that this was not going to be he wanted to hold a trial and hes looking at all this casework casework and the briefs back and forth. On one side people were saying you know oh well, the reason the state decided this way because it promotes the optimal childrearing environment. He is like welcome is that the optimal childrearing environment . On the other side they were saying this harms, this has real impact them harm and it causes real harm to gaze and the children they are raising and civil unions are secondclass, secondbest and unconstitutional. So he said will prove that. What is the harm . But he was an interesting character. He was not outed until after the trial and a columnist from the San Francisco chronicle wrote a column about him. He said its not that he hid but its just more that he was raised at the very private person. I was really grateful because its really so unusual to have a judge tell you what he was thinking and feeling at every moment of the trial. And if the whole thing is, im not sure theres ever been a reporter embedded in a major civil rights case in the same way because of the kind of privilege issues that i was racing the board. You kind of ted olson as the hero in a way and im wondering as you reflect back on it, because we know how they got involved in the process from the front end. Was he that much of a change maker, he is a person or do you think there could have been other good lawyers who maybe werent as conservative that could have helped the cause of move forward . E, so i would say a couple of things to that. There are many great lawyers who have worked, dedicated their life to these issues. At that time there werent a lot of people who were the Movement Lawyers did not believe. As i said before it was time to bring this case or the dome a case or an tome of courses the law that was struck down in edy windsurfs case that prohibited the federal government from recognizing marriages in states where its already legal. There werent a lot of lawyers who worked on issues that were wanting to take this case. In fact ted, he knew that his involvement would be greeted with great suspicion and it was. People thought he had taken it to tank it. He knew he needed someone from the other side of the aisle to be his partner. David boies who was not the first person he approached, he actually approached a guy named paul smith and paul is an openly gay attorney constitutional attorney very wellrespected who had brought the lawrence fico texas challenge. He argued it in the Supreme Court and that struck down laws. So he went to paul and he said would you cocounsel with me on this . Paul said i have course thought about bringing this case because in lawrence fico texas the judge in dissent said you are opening the door to gay marriage. Paul thought maybe i should file the case that he talked to Supreme Court clerks is that its very different for Justice Kennedy to say on one hand the state cant criminalize private Sexual Conduct that is protected by the constitution. And it entirely different thing for him to say in that view in a way that the states must, must bless these deviants because Justice Kennedy is also a federalist meaning he thinks their rights are preserved by the state senate ought to be protected. So he said no, i wish you luck but i think this is too risky. To your point about with ted olsons involvement gamechanging . I would argue that it is. I would argue that it was and heres why. Its not that there arent any republicans out there ever whoever came out in support of Marriage Equality. Dick cheney had, not a constitutional right but in his view that states ought to legalize samesex marriage. What was gamechanging about olson is one he was making a legal argument and he came from he was a cardcarrying Federalist Society member. These are not the kinds of arguments that most conservative lawyers make. So he was making this conservative legal case for samesex marriage. That changed i think a lot of the conversation. One of the lawyer said, one of the lawyers on the team said her own mother hadnt totally accepted her relationship with her wife until ted olson came along. She said it was almost like if hes doing this it cant be all that bad. So not only did it garner huge amounts of headlines and there has been i think, there was at the time and there still is a lot of resentment about the amount of attention that this case god and the fact that i want to do a book about it and hbo is doing a documentary about it. And it probably isnt fair because there are many other people who did amazing work. Just south of here married but not those who brought the massachusetts challenge, the first of its kind and it didnt get the kind of sustained relentless kind of front page attention. Thats probably not fair but that attention i think was very helpful in catalyzing a conversation that had been taking place in the country. I also think that Ted Ken Nauman and ill bet a lot of you know who he is, he was the engineer of bushs real act. Ken came out and joined this cause and then applied all of the political skill he had used giving george bush a second term to this issue. Open act an enormous amount of wall street republican money for this cause. Ken did that because ted olson was involved. So i think that this case had a lot of impact. [laughter] i will ask him and get back to you. You received a lot of flak and news corporations about the fact that you are a straight woman writing about gay issues. If how do you approach that, so how do you approach getting flak for being a straight woman writing about a gay issue . I think you know, first of all i would like to say one of the harking things about this is that the book was incredibly well reviewed by the New York Times and Washington Post and independent weekly but one of the really gratifying things for me was its true. I think that a lot of people were close to this case. It was a controversial case to bring. I think some of the criticism about the book reflects that criticism of the case but what has been really lovely is having people like Elizabeth Birch who is the head of the Human Rights Campaign step in and write i did not know her. She said you must read this bo book. Never has tory osborne who is the head of the national and task force wrote, never has a history of our movement been told in such compelling detail. But there are some people that think that it should be a history of the entire movement. What this is is not that. Im a journalist. I am not an historian and what i tried to do was tell a story or a particular set of characters. I think there should be many more books written about this movement. No one movement can be captured in a single book. If you go back to the civil rights struggles of the previous century you had Taylor Branch wrote about Martin Luther king and you had a simple justice which was very focused on brown. There is room for many more books and i look forward to reading those. I think to say that somehow this case wasnt deserving or theres too much attention to it, it really i think detracts from the enormous sacrifice that these plaintiffs put their lives on hold for four and half years. They went through these incredible ups and downs. I felt that they deserved a book and that is the book i wrote but like i said its one chapter in a much larger narrative. I think there have been good books written and there will be more. I know there are more coming. Its becoming something of a hot agenda in publishing these days. I was reading in the New York Times the fact that you focus so much on this issue and i came here. I was trying to figure out why you called this the watershed moment of the civil Rights Movement. Hearing your story it is one story about an entire movement. So thank you for writing the book and answering my questions. Thank you. I am curious as to what your perspective is now relative to your Investigative Journalism and career and papers and multiarticles and the enterprise of coming up with the book, investment, time and resources and what did you discover along the way that maybe you anticipated or didnt about how that would be different than your traditional journalistic career . A book is very different from a newspaper story. A newspaper story even the ones i write which are always really long, they might be 5000 words that you have to keep people interested along the way. The book is different. This is a character driven narrative so you have to find ways to invest in these characters and to be carried along with their story, to be rooting for them. I dont just mean the one side. This is a point if you book but i mean i think you will find chuck cooper is every bit as compelling a character with an incredible story. Im not going to ruin the surprise of it that chuck cooper the lawyer who bought this case all the way to the Supreme Court has an amazing revolution along the way. You ask somebody else earlier, what were they worried about and what was the low point . One of them was they were so fearful of Chuck Cooper Cross examining them but it turns out their testimony was intensely, intensely the last person on earth that they thought it would be with him personally. You can read about that in the book but we were talking about this earlier. One of the things you do is to load up everything that you know way up high so you have the lead in any sort of say heres all the good stuff. You then slowly unpack the good stuff. In a book you want surprises. Everybody knows the outcome and you know what happened in the Supreme Court so what has been great if these reviews. Even though you know its a pageturner you want to kind of find out. The reason you want to is because you get to know these people in a way that you didnt threw out five years he saw the headlines. You really want people to invest in the people youre writing about. You want to save some surprises for the end and you want to highlight tension. If you read the stories you would never think that david boies and ted olson had a single strategic difference. You would never know how chris and sandy and paul were you wouldnt know a lot of these things. A lot of these things carry people along throughout and i tried to do that but its like putting together a giant puzzle. I have boxes and boxes and boxes of the notes are literally for five and half years. They are trying to figure out when do i tell this one thing was a challenge but fun. Ive really enjoyed it. I know this isnt what you are writing this book for it but it struck me listening to people asking questions about ted olson and you are very come your belly very compelling testimony that is evolution on at least this issue made me think about what you learned about characters. I know that you tell journalistic stories in this book as a narrative of facts and events that occurred through time period but what about delving into the characters. Seems like somebody like ted olson is a very interesting character. Today you get a chance to talk with him at all about his role in bush v. Gore and his outrage is taking away of our democracy is . Note, im serious. It probably will not surprise you to hear that ted doesnt see it that way but david does. The same person doing the plaintiffs in your book would think of as horrendous things in bush v. Gore is doing saintly things in this case. Its interesting and is like what you said about chuck cooper. I knew him after he clerked for judge rehnquist and was trying to subvert everything from ronald reagan. I can imagine him having any kind of epiphany like you are talking about but it sounds like he is capable of evolving as well. Some people have a great man or great woman theory of history but they are not necessarily president ial people but people like ted olson and chuck cooper who may evolve and may be good on some issues. Everybody is complicated. Have you learned anything in that respect and talking to these folks . Guest one of the themes that run throughout the book is this idea of otherness. When you dont know someone who is gay its easy to say they want to get married for the same reasons that we do. One of the Young Lawyers was very conservative and clerked for judge scanlon and one of the Supreme Court cases and he was skeptical of teds argument. This was his younger wingmen but as he read the arguments and got immersed into the evidence he was convinced that this was in fact unconstitutional. But he said and it became personal as well because he got to know the clients. He got to know these four people and he said they are in love. Forward ever reason he didnt quite understand how her fellow was to say you cant have marriage. You can have this other thing and there was that same breakdown of stereotypes between the democrats and republicans on the team. Early on you know, one of the other young attorneys on teds team, staunch republican walks into the war room and the lawyers and political guys are plotting about what they are going to pass to the media that day. Chad griffin who cut his teeth on the Clinton White house said to matt mcgill would you please stop dressing like a young republican . Overtime they all came to see each other not as people on the other side of the aisle but people who are smart people who over five years, my gosh people would become friends. So i think thats a real lesson in this to me is that the more people can see people just are who they are and not stick a label on them, i think its realizing people are a lot more complicated than whatever the stereotypical idea that you might have about the mess. Would you consider writing your next book on the subject like back . [laughter] thats a good idea. I will take that under consideration. I assume youve thought about how one becomes one doesnt but theres also another side and im curious if it was ever considered . We read a lot in the monitor about marriage being for one man and one woman but no state has defined the concept as far as i know and biologically its pretty tricky to do. Did they ever consider using that . I think the evidence in the trial was very much centered on is this a choice because if its not a choice, then constitutionally it becomes much more problematic. The evidence you know was pretty clear and both judge walker and the Appeals Court above him essentially judge walker said the evidence is clear that this is not something that can be readily changed. So that is what was particularly relevant to this particular issue. And its important and its interesting that too is the number. The majority of americans now pretty clear consensus that is not a choice. You mentioned about the case going to trial. I followed your book and there were some of that on television when it was actually taking place or soon after. Can you explain how that happened and whether that was to the advantage ultimately without trial taking place . Actually the argument in the ninth circuit which is kind of a dryer of pellet argument was televised that the trial itself was not. Judge walker had a plan to broadcast it by youtube and chuck cooper when all the way to the Supreme Court before the trial even got underway. On this issue could the trial be televised in the Supreme Court ultimately decided in coopers it could not be. It was interesting chris and sandy, really for the team bringing cases was a real blow because they really have this idea that it was going to be like a scopes kind of trial of evolution. And how were they going to speak to the American Public if the American Public couldnt even hear the evidence . So that was tough. And ultimately you know there was a moment actually when it was going up and ted olson kind of like the idea of kennedy getting an early preview of this case and so we were talking about that. Chad griffin one of the main characters of the book said kind of like a ps. Are you down with being one of the five you know . By e it was a tough blow to them that it was not televised. So anyway in the last year or so since the decision came down both in the prop a case and oma or the winter case you know there has been a wave, at least similar if not not more at the statelevel challenges to marriage laws in the states and in most of the states they have been overturned. This is more for the benefit of the audience i guess im most of the time when these bands are challenged and they are overturned the case that is actually being cited by the state level is windsor. Its not the case. The winter case you talked about a little bit which is overturning the federal dilma laws so at a certain level if you compare the case and windsor in many ways at this point winter has had a lot more impact. Did you feel some way that may be covered or were focused on the wrong case . Noah because i focused on them both. The case again this is kind of the tale of a group of people who decided to kind of upset the status quo and what they did was really an insurrection. This was against the wisdom of the entire bulgy bt establishment. I think you now, i love being windsor and her lawyer. There are amazing chapters about that case as well including this wonderful scene where the Obama Administration had decided to switch. They had been initially defending it. Kohl. Because prop 8 was decided on a technicality, essentially, it doesnt have precedencal value. So you cant cite it, this is the reason. The winsor case doma was decided on the merit, the decision, Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision. It took all of the arguments that roddy had made and talked about the importance of marriage and why marriage is important, which was very much an argument in the prop 8 case, and so when i think its every ban now. Its under challenge, either at the state or federalle level, so of course the cite to winsor, and in every federal case the judges have cited the perry, the prop 8 im pretty sure every ever case cited to the prop 8 trial record and making judgments whether sexuality is a choice or the harm its done to gays and lesbians and their children by telling people that you cant get married. And i think that both of those cases have been hugely beneficial, and well have to see what the Supreme Court decides to do in the end. One second. You touched on it briefly about the fact that the entire lgbt movement was behind the fact they were bringing it to the Supreme Court. What your thoughts on that . Even princetons the former Bishop Robinson was against the fact it was going to the Supreme Court. He thought it was too early. In the case of the simple Rights Movement they didnt push to the Supreme Court level until the majority of the country was for it. Do you think it was too early . I think you have to play the whatif game. I thought it wases a great story and i wanted to follow it and rite write a book, but what it ted olsen got his right. He didnt want a trial. That trial slowed things down. Also didnt want a bunch of things that happened to slow the case down when it was in its middle phase, the appellate case. So what itself got to the Supreme Court asaphia as he wanted, would the outcome be the same . The concern was not that everybody didnt share the goal. The concern was that five justices of the United States Supreme Court would vote and say, these bans are in fact constitutional. And enshrine that into legal precedent, and the worry was, people remembered what happened. Bowers was a case that preceded lawrence v. Texas. The beauers case was a challenge to georgias sod my statute sodomy statued, and the cop census was it was brought too fast and the Supreme Court doesnt like to reverse itself. So how much longer could this wait . On the other hand, lets talk about this whoifs on the other side. The people bringing this thought was that this wasnt just about marriage. That it wases about when a state says that certain kinds of relationships are worthy of something, but others are not, that has consequences going far beyond the able to not to walk down the compile call yourself married. Its in chad griffins view, it drives things like bullying in school. It drives things like the fact that gay and lesbian teenagers have a higher suicide rate. It drives things like the higher rate of gay and lesbian homelessness, and so from their point of view, its like, what if another generation or five grades of kids grow up and are still being told this, chris perry touched its bans like proposition 8 did not exist when she was growing up in bakersfield, california, that her entire life would have been lived on a higher aac, and from their point of view, there was no more time to waste. And what if mitt romney had been elected instead of president barack obama. That was a distinct possibility, and close to happening, and one of the older liberal justices were to die and be replaced by a mitt romney, would there be even a possibility of five votes at that point . And then how much longer would you have to wait then . So, thats the kind of neat thing about history. You cant predict it going into it, and its hard to know how things would have turned out if it didnt lay out the way it did. What really legalized gay marriage around the country, and was it a case . And i know kind of the question you always well, is it brown or was it the civil Rights Movement that changed things in this country, and so im asking you that question. I know you focused on that, for one thing you have to write three books at least. But im almost hearing your answer, both are important, but i want to put you on the spot a little bit and really want you to choose. Was it just some people deciding in a room, deciding a case or was its movement . It is a movement. Its so many important events, right . It is what happened at stonewall when are in people who dont know what stonewall is, police used to go into bars and raid gay bars. You werent allowed to congregate in bars. So it was the stonewall riots when the police raided a bar in new york city. It was the a. I. D. S. Activists who mobilized in a health crisis, and people live cleave jones, one of the main characters of my book and the creator of the a. I. D. S. Quilt, it was all of the work that people like evan johnson did on the ground, on the political ground, and it was also i know you dont like that answer but it was also litigation. At a certain opinion this was in dispute but at a certain point you basically say, if this is a civil right, you cant put civil rights up to a vote. You dont get to put peoples basic civil rights up to a vote. You couldnt hold a referendum in New Hampshire and say i dont want black people to attend the same school. Not possible. And so i think that the debate over when was it the time to go federal and take it to the court . It wasnt that would ever not part of the movements plan. It just was a question of when. [inaudible] the terrible crimeses that happens to gay people just because theyre gay. Yes. Over the course of this reporting period, this last five years, there was a moment where one of the lawyers one of the young gay attorneys on the team, henry, said there are thered been this rash of terrible teen suicides, and he was i dont know if mayor remember these but a boy hung himself after being taunted at school. A College Student at rutgers, whose roommate taped him in an intimate act, threw himself off the George Washington bridge, and it was sort of this moment where this lawyer enrique said, i think were making so much progress, i think were doing so much good and then Something Like this happens, and, yeah, those that kind of thing shocks the conscience. One more . Hi. I have a comment and a question. The comment is, i wanted to add to what you just said because i think it in terms of the movement, its also been brave lgbt people coming out. I think about when i was younger, no one would have watched ellen, and now everybody watches ellen, and i think that as more people have been out, all over the spectrum, whether its sports person, and it just becomes part of our life and i think thats a huge issue that shifted just in my lifetime. Thees
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.