To say there's been a flurry of discussion around the release of a new book on the legal case that challenged California's Proposition 8 would be an understatement.
The book—Forcing the Spring, by New York Times writer Jo Becker—has been thoroughly pilloried by many plugged-in LGBT activists and journalists, both publicly and privately. While a few have attempted to cut Becker some slack for documenting some behind-the-scenes litigation and political strategies, most fault her for an approach that seems hell-bent on making Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin and conservative icon attorney Ted Olson into the heroes of an upcoming Hollywood docudrama about How the Marriage Equality Movement was Won.
Hollywood movies do have a tendency to skew the historical record for audiences that have not been paying attention to the real-world events; and, if it does come to the silver screen, Forcing the Spring will carry an impressive credential: It was based on a book from a "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist" ( even though she co-authored the entry that won ).
The intense negative reaction from the LGBT community to Becker's book indicates the prospect that the marriage-equality movement's real history will be lost is very troubling to many LGBT people who have watched and been part of that movement. It did not begin with the Griffin-Olson lawsuit in 2009, but with individual couples as early as the 1970s and with veteran civil-rights legal activists beginning in Hawaii in the 1990s.
Conservative gay commentator Andrew Sullivan led the assault on Becker's book last week. In his April 16 blog entry for his "The Daily Dish," Sullivan berated Becker for suggesting Griffin is on par with legendary Black civil-rights activist Rosa Parks. He dismissed the book as riddled with "jaw-dropping distortion," such as Becker 's claim that the marriage-equality movement "for years had largely languished in obscurity."
Sullivan's assault was joined quickly by an impressive string of critiques: writer-activist Dan Savage ( "a bullshit 'history' of the movement for marriage equality" ), former New York Times columnist Frank Rich ( "For a journalist to claim that marriage equality revolution began in 2008 is as absurd as saying civil rights struggle began with Obama" ) and White House strategist Jim Messina.
Becker offered a defense against the criticism, explaining to Politico.com that she had not tried to write a definitive history of the marriage-equality or "gay rights" movements.
"Many people have contributed to the success the movement has experienced. I have the [utmost] respect for all the people who contributed to that success," wrote Becker. "My book was not meant to be a beginning-to-end-history of the movement. It's about a particular group of people at an extraordinary moment in time, and I hope that people will be moved by their stories."
Unfortunately, her intro to the book and the slick public-relations material sent out to promote that book proclaim otherwise.
On page one of the book, she writes that the marriage equality "revolution ... begins with a handsome, bespectacled thirty-five-year-old political consultant named Chad Griffin…." Her own summary of the book calls it is "the definitive account of the fight to win the rights of marriage and full citizenship for all…." And the Pengiun Press release that accompanies review copies of the book calls it, "A deeply insightful and riveting account of a national civil rights struggle…." It quotes such celebrity legal commentators as Jeff Toobin as saying the book is "a superb, behind-the-scenes account of the legal battle to bring marriage equality to the nation." The NAACP's former president, Benjamin Todd Jealous, calls it "the definitive account of one of the great civil-rights struggles of our times."
This is the kind of hype that accompanies many books. It's how publishers, in a very competitive environment, woo attention and favorable comments from reviewers, television talk shows, and other vehicles in a position to stoke book sales.
But critics of Forcing the Spring take issue with the book beyond the exaggeration of its marketing campaign.
"Forcing the Spring just doesn't get it right," writes openly gay BuzzFeed legal reporter Chris Geidner. He notes that Becker quotes Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black as being rebuffed by an audience of potential LGBT major donors to the litigation that Griffin's American Foundation for Equal Rights organized. Becker also reports that the donor meeting's organizer, Tim Gill, "denounced Black outright." Geidner provides a link to a video of the closed-door meeting about which Becker was writing that shows Black's speech was interrupted with applause five times, and won a standing ovation from at least a few in the audience. And Geidner says Gill's alleged denouncement of Black was "more of a nuanced defense of 'gradualism'" strategy for winning marriage equality.
Hollywood movies require conflict and struggle, and it may be that the book—whose inside cover touts it as a "gripping behind-the-scenes narrative with the lightning pace of the greatest legal thrillers"—fell prey to the need to dramatize some hurdles for her heroes to overcome. A more journalistic approach might have conveyed the mixed reaction of Black's audience and contrasted that with Black's personal interpretation of how he was received.
It also would have been helpful for Becker to have talked in some depth with LGBT legal activists who have been working on the marriage equality movement for many years.
A number of LGBT legal activists have pointed out significant factual errors in Becker's account as reported by the press thus far ( none had received a copy of the book in advance ) and expressed astonishment at her cavalier pronouncement that the marriage equality movement had been "languishing" in "obscurity" before Griffin and Olson came along.
Becker writes that LGBT legal activists planned to win marriage equality in 30 states before filing a federal lawsuit.
"Lambda Legal did not have a strategy of getting to 30 states with marriage equality ( or any particular number for that matter ) before we would consider bringing a federal case," said Lambda Legal's Jon Davidson.
Becker's portrayal of Roberta Kaplan, attorney to Edith Windsor in the Supreme Court case that struck down the key provision of DOMA, as an "outsider" to the establishment legal activists was also widely disputed.
"Robbie was not an outsider," said GLAD spokeswoman Carisa Cunningham. "She had worked for the ACLU for years, just as she did on Edie's case. She also worked with Lambda on the New York marriage case, Hernandez."
Becker was not hired by the movement to write its history. If she and her book promoters had just been a little more careful to pitch the book as a behind-the-scenes picture of the Proposition 8 litigation, the hue and cry might not be so harsh as it is.
The drama achieved by portraying the pre-Griffin-Olson marriage-equality movement as "languishing" and "obscurity" extracts a price from Becker's credentials. For LGBT people, the Baehr v. Miike trial in Honolulu and its subsequent legal victories—and even its political defeats, including passage by the U.S. Congress of the Defense of Marriage Act—warrant neither of those dismissive assessments. There ensued an intense political war over marriage equality on state ballots around the country beginning in 1998, and, while supporters of same-sex marriage lost those battles, they came back with a steady, methodically planned and executed series of legal challenges that won civil unions in Vermont in the late 1990s and marriage equality in Massachusetts in 2003.
And just a month before Griffin and Olson first joined that battle with the filing of the Proposition 8 lawsuit, Lambda Legal won a unanimous victory in Iowa. The decades of cultural and legal combat opened up the country to a conversation that became both personal and national and moved public opinion. The Prop 8 case was definitely part of that effort and, near the last paragraph of her book, Becker tempers her assessment of the Griffin-Olson effort as having brought the dream of equality "within reach."
The Proposition 8 litigation enabled same-sex couples in California to be married, and other political activists and lawsuits have won marriage equality in more than a dozen other states. The legal team of Olson and David Boies is back at work with a case in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and other legal teams have similarly situated cases in other federal appeals courts. Each is hoping to win marriage equality for all states. Almost certainly, one of them will succeed. But the credit will belong to the many, not the few.
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