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Advocate Evan Wolfson on ending discrimination
by Charlsie Dewey
2015-10-28

This article shared 4302 times since Wed Oct 28, 2015
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Evan Wolfson will soon be out of job—and he couldn't be happier.

Wolfson is the founder and president of the national Freedom to Marry campaign, which is ultimately credited with developing the strategy that lead to winning same-sex marriage across the country earlier this year.

Wolfson founded Freedom to Marry in 2003, after nearly two decades working as an attorney in the civil rights arena, including serving as marriage project director for Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund and as co-counsel in the historic Hawaii same-sex marriage case in the 1990s.

The origins for Freedom to Marry began much earlier though—in 1983, when Wolfson wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on gay people and the importance of marriage in ending the discrimination faced by LGBT community across the full spectrum of their lives.

"I thought about what would be the best way to challenge discrimination against gay people, and I had come to understand the language a society gives people shapes people's understanding of who they are and who other people are," Wolfson said. "The heart of the discrimination that gay people face is denial of our love, and the pre-eminent language of love in our society and virtually every other society, is marriage.

"By claiming the language of marriage and by claiming participation in marriage, we would be winning something important, a bundle of protections, responsibilities and meanings that come with marriage, but we would also be claiming this powerful engine of transformation, the common language of love, commitment and family, which would help non-gay people understand better who gay people are across the board."

Wolfson's thesis provided the basis for Freedom to Marry's three-pronged approach to winning marriage equality: win more states, grow the majority for marriage and end federal marriage discrimination—an approach he thinks other movements can use to achieve success as well.

As he works to close up shop at Freedom to Marry, one of his objectives is to share Freedom to Marry's approach and the the lessons he's learned with others fighting in the area of civil rights, particularly other LGBT organizations, that he thinks can help them reach their goals as well.

Wolfson is coming to Chicago next month as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. He said he plans to talk about the "tremendous transformation the country has made in understanding who gay people are and why discrimination under the law is wrong."

"It's a transformation we've seen in hearts and minds as well as the law, and it's the transformation we have to keep building on as we keep going; to win the other protections that we don't yet have," he said. "I'm going to talk about the importance of this change, what it says about America, and the work ahead as we continue seeking to end discrimination and assure a happy, secure and good lived experience for people, not just under law, but in their lives."

Continuing to change people's hearts and minds will be paramount to achieving federal, state and local non-discrimination protections as well as bettering the everyday lives of LGBT people in all pockets of the country.

"It is about the legal and political goals of securing non-discrimination protection in federal, state and local laws, and it's also about the cultural and community support that people should have no matter where they live," Wolfson said. "We want to make sure that people's lives are secure, happy and productive, so it's also about the cultural understanding and support.

"Making sure kids don't grow up isolated, bullied, harassed and fearful, no matter where they live, and making sure gay and transgender people, as they age, are not forced back into the closet, because they can't find support or facilities to help them."

Wolfson said there is already a national non-discrimination campaign underway using the Freedom to Marry model.

"The campaign is called Freedom For All Americans," Wolfson said. "Many of my staff have gone over or will be going over to this new campaign, and they will follow a similar strategy to achieve federal, state and local non-discrimination protections."

Wolfson said the heart of the Freedom to Marry model involved "having a clear goal, a clear strategy to get to that goal, a campaign machine and a set of partnerships that could deliver on the battles necessary to fulfill the strategy and to get to the goal."

"That strategy might not be the exact strategy for a different goal, like non-discrimination, but the elements of having clarity around the goal and the strategy, building the right structure, the right campaign, the right partnerships, and using some of the methodology and tactics, those are all very replicable."

Personally, Wolfson's biggest lesson for others is to "believe you can win."

He said he always believed same-sex marriage could win, even during the movement's darkest times.

"I believe one of the things I got right was to just always be looking for the way forward," he said. "You have to believe in the power of change, the power of persuasion, the power of organizing and the power of people to rise."

Wolfson will be in Chicago Wed., Nov. 4, 6-7 p.m., at at Francis W. Parker School, 2233 N Clark St., as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, which is taking place Oct. 24-Nov. 8. See ChicagoHumanities.org .


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