Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality

by Becker, Jo

  Rosen threw a few more questions his way. “I love the way you talk about committed couples,” she said “But don’t call them ‘committed couples.’ Give ’em names, give ’em faces.”

  “How’s his listening face?” Dunn asked Rosen.

  Chad made as though he were listening to an opponent of same-sex marriage answer a question.

  “Your listening face is a slightly unhappy face,” Dunn said. “I want to work on your smile. It’s not hard. It’s about lifting the corners of your mouth.”

  Chad tried out a “listening” smile.

  “Try to go bigger,” Rosen said.

  “Really? Oh my God, it feels like I’m smiling so big.”

  “Little more, bring it up,” she replied.

  It took several more attempts until Rosen was satisfied. “That’s nice.”

  “You need to send a nonverbal message that you are a nice guy,” Dunn explained. “You are in people’s living rooms. What you are saying to people is, you’re a guest in their house, and these are serious issues, but I’m a pleasant person. I’m the kind of person you want to have back.”

  “Hey!” Adam said, urging the black SUV they had hired to pull over. “There are the Zarrillos!”

  Jeff and Paul were still in the air, due to touch down later that afternoon, But there, standing on the street in front of the White House, were his mom and dad, along with Paul’s sister. The AFER team was headed over to the Supreme Court to do a walk-through of the area where Tuesday’s rally would be staged. Did they want to come along? Adam asked.

  “This was supposed to happen,” Jeff’s mom said, climbing into the backseat as everyone scooted over to make room.

  The war room team was on a high, riding a crush of positive news coverage. The coalition’s surrogates had blanketed the Sunday talk shows that morning. Boies had not been able to resist repeating his prediction that, one way or another, the ruling wouldn’t be close, but otherwise had been pitch-perfect.

  “David nailed it,” Adam said.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics had released a report, just in time for the arguments. “Scientific evidence affirms that children have similar developmental and emotional needs and receive similar parenting whether they are raised by parents of the same or different genders,” it said. Gays and lesbians were raising nearly two million children in the United States, according to 2010 Census figures. “If a child has 2 living and capable parents who choose to create a permanent bond by way of civil marriage, it is in the best interests of their child(ren) that legal and social institutions allow and support them to do so,” the report concluded.

  Former federal judge Michael McConnell, a standard-bearer in Federalist Society circles, had written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging the Court to strike down DOMA on the grounds that Congress had unconstitutionally trampled on the states’ prerogative to define marriage. As to Prop 8, he wrote that the justices should allow marriages to resume in California but deny the decision any precedential value by finding Cooper’s clients had no standing, not the outcome the team wanted most but still better than nothing.

  Support for same-sex marriage had reached an all-time high, according to the latest polling by ABC and the Washington Post, with 58 percent of those surveyed saying it should be legal. An overwhelming 81 percent of adults under thirty were supporters, as were a bare majority of Republicans coupled with Republican-leaning independents. Support among Catholics, an especially critical data point given the Court’s makeup and the fact that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had filed a brief asking the justices to overturn Prop 8, had jumped to 58 percent. And in one of the poll’s most important findings, it appeared that a majority of Americans would be comfortable with the Supreme Court deciding the issue once and for all; 64 percent of those polled said that the U.S. Constitution trumps state laws on marriage.

  The way to change a business is to change the buying habits of its customers, and politics is not much different. Following the release of the poll and Portman’s announcement, a slew of politicians had made a figurative rush to the altar. Every Democratic senator who had been in office long enough to have endorsed DOMA had come out against it. Days before, Hillary Rodham Clinton had become the latest high-profile Democrat to endorse the right of gays and lesbians to wed, recording a videotaped announcement that Chad had arranged after running into her on the Acela train that speeds between New York and Washington. What had once seemed politically toxic was now considered not only safe but, at least for Democrats, necessary: Politico, a news Web site for political junkies, had declared that endorsement by Clinton, who had recently stepped down as secretary of state, was a sure sign that she was running for president in 2016. Four years earlier, it likely would have come to the opposite conclusion.

  A just-released Republican National Committee “autopsy” on why Romney lost the election to Obama mentioned the party’s position on same-sex marriage four times. While it did not explicitly call for a platform change, it noted that “there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about the issues involving the treatment and rights of gays—and for many younger voters these issues are a gateway into whether the party is a place to be.” Its authors included Sally Bradshaw, a Florida strategist close to former governor Jeb Bush, and Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary to George W. Bush. Mehlman had talked to them both. And that morning, top Bush strategist Karl Rove had said that he could imagine a pro–gay marriage 2016 GOP presidential nominee.

  The Supreme Court was under renovation, and the façade was draped with a giant screen, a photographic replica of the building. But it was still majestic, and after the SUV that had carried them there dropped them out front, everyone just stood on the Court’s steps for several minutes under a gray sky. Flanking the group on either side of the steps were two marble statues atop fifty-ton marble blocks, a woman contemplating a blindfolded figure of Justice she holds in her hand, and a man holding a tablet of laws and a sheathed sword, representing the authority of law.

  More than four years of theoretical planning, and here they finally were. In the group photo that they took, with the Court’s monumental bronze door in the background and its EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW inscription overhead, everyone was smiling and leaning into one another, one big family.

  Adam, Jones, Jeff’s parents Dominick and Linda Zarrillo, Paul’s sister Maria McGuire, and researcher Eric Kay were in the back row. Elizabeth Riel, who had taken over as AFER’s senior communications strategist, stood next to Shumway Marshall, the team’s online projects coordinator, and Manny Rivera, who handled press. Fund-raiser Justin Mikita, who was soon to be married to Modern Family (and 8) star Jesse Tyler Ferguson, hammed it up with Melissa Gibbs, who handled the team’s logistics and advance needs. Videographer Matt Baume and intern Hannah Faust stood on either side of Evan Sippel, the one staffer other than Adam who went all the way back to the trial. He had left in the middle of the case to attend law school, but had returned on a volunteer basis to help the team out.

  “Listen up,” Adam said, finally breaking the trance. “If you guys could focus!”

  Kevin Nix, a member of Chad’s staff who was coordinating the rally events, walked them through what would be happening on the opening day of arguments. Nothing about the logistics had been left to chance. The lawyers did not want an out-of-control stampede, so a group called United for Marriage had been set up to channel grassroots energy. Cleve Jones had been enlisted to call on people to march in their hometowns, and more than 175 events had been organized in all fifty states. The Human Rights Campaign was also urging people to change their Facebook profile photos to a new marriage equality logo it had developed: a pink equals sign over a red background, poll-tested as the colors of love.

  At the same time, everyone understood they had to give supporters a place to congregate in Washington, D.C.; the National Organization for Marriage was
busing in thousands of opponents. Chad had gone over every detail of the rally in the nation’s capital in multiple briefings: American flags? Check: Three thousand had been ordered, along with a thousand red IT’S TIME FOR MARRIAGE T-shirts. Volunteers would hand palm cards to supporters, with suggested talking points to use if they were interviewed by reporters, directions to the nearest public bathrooms, and a request that they be respectful to the other side. Others trained in crowd deescalation techniques would be on deck to ensure that nobody got out of hand.

  The National Organization for Marriage’s base of operations would be blocks away; the organization had obtained a permit for an area near the Natural History Museum. Chad, knowing that the television crews would set up just outside the Court, wanted to be right out front, with a small stage for the coalition’s speakers and marriage equality supporters filling the 252-foot wide oval plaza. There was just one problem: That space was first-come, first-served; there was no way to reserve it with a permit. The solution had been to enlist volunteers from Occupy Wall Street to save the area for them. The Occupy Wall Street protest movement had drawn worldwide attention in 2011 when it camped out in a park in lower Manhattan near the New York Stock Exchange to protest income inequality, resisting eviction efforts for nearly two months.

  Chad had not been wild about the idea, but, as one staffer put it, “Nobody can hold space like they do.” He had acquiesced after being assured that they would not identify themselves. They were camped out in a circle of folding chairs, bundled up against the cold, when the SUV pulled up. Nearby, line standers hired by Adam were first in a line that had already begun to form for the limited number of seats the Court reserves for the public. Only the plaintiffs themselves were guaranteed a seat inside; the Reiners and the rest of the board, along with the plaintiffs’ families, all had to nab one of the public tickets that would be handed out on the morning of the argument.

  Speakers would keep the crowd entertained before and during the arguments. They included civil rights leaders, prominent Republicans, the NFL football players who had campaigned for marriage equality during the election, and regular families talking about what the ability to marry would mean to them. A thousand signs with slogans like FREEDOM MEANS FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE and MARRIAGE IS LOVE COMMITMENT AND FAMILY had been printed for supporters to hold, visible to any of the justices if they happened to look out their windows.

  The pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, a virulently antigay church out of Florida with aggressive picketing techniques, would also be holding a protest outside the Court. “Fag Marriage Dooms Nations. WBC to Picket” read a faxed press release announcing his plan and predicting that a pro-gay ruling “will usher in your final doom!” Chad was happy to have the church be the face of their opponents. “Make sure you give reporters a copy of this,” he had said, pointing to the fax during one briefing. “I want to help him get his message out.”

  A light snow blanketed the city overnight, and as the bus passed by the National Mall that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol the following morning, the tour guide whom Adam had hired for the day pointed out the place on the frozen lawn, about the size of a football field, where the AIDS quilt was first laid out in 1987, commemorating the lives of those lost to the pandemic. By now, it had grown to forty-eight thousand panels and weighed fifty-four tons.

  “That’s Cleve!” Sandy exclaimed, though Jones, the quilt’s creator, was back at his hotel resting.

  “Keep us calm,” Kris had begged on one phone call before they arrived. “Make sure there are moments when we can take a breath.”

  This tour, of some of Washington’s civil rights landmarks, was Adam’s answer. Chad, Lance Black, all four plaintiffs, Kris’s two boys, Jeff’s parents, and Paul’s sister had all piled on a bus shortly after 9 A.M. The plan was to go to the National Archives, which housed the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, then on to President Abraham Lincoln’s cottage, where he developed the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

  Chad, who had an interview later that afternoon on CNN, checked his e-mail for news. In the last twenty-four hours, two swing-state Democrats, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, had jumped on the bandwagon and announced their support for same-sex marriage. Chris Cillizza, a popular blogger for the Washington Post, wrote that “no matter how the high court rules . . . one thing is already clear: The political debate over gay marriage is over.” The dustup du jour was an L.A. Times story reporting that Chief Justice Roberts’s lesbian cousin, who lived in California and wanted to marry her partner, would be attending the arguments the following day. Per the lawyers’ instructions, talking points had been sent out warning surrogates not to comment on the development, and Jeff had been asked to take the story down from his Facebook page. But, Hilary Rosen had e-mailed, “we are allowed to be secretly thrilled.”

  Elizabeth Riel gave the plaintiffs a rundown of what to expect when they arrived at the National Archives. Several of the networks and a couple of still photographers had been invited to meet them at the Archives. There would be no Q&A, but everyone needed to hold on the stairs near the front door so the crews could get their shot. They would then be led around to a side door; the front was actually not in use.

  For the most part, the plaintiffs had gotten used to such stagecraft, but every once in a while the oddity of it all still struck them. “Don’t look,” Kris had said with a grimace, emerging one day for an interview with CNN wearing lipstick and mascara. “I have makeup on and they made me take off my glasses.” She’d shrugged. “I guess to look girly.”

  Paul, over dinner one night at the Reiners’, put it this way. “It’s like, there’s your private life, and then there’s your private life that’s packaged for public view.”

  “I just keep projecting out to tomorrow,” Kris said. “It’s kind of like”—she stopped, searching for the right phrase—“like we’re all just jumping off. Here. We. Go.”

  Stepping out into the cold, the two couples hit their mark as the cameras rolled and clicked. PLAINTIFFS INSPECT U.S. CONSTITUTION AHEAD OF GAY MARRIAGE CASE, read one headline. But what started off as a photo op and an opportunity to keep everyone occupied became something deeply meaningful once inside. Forty-eight years earlier to the day, Martin Luther King Jr., after completing his march from Selma to Montgomery, had given one of his most famous speeches. “How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it? I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.” The timing of the archives tour was completely coincidental, but it felt like an omen.

  The group wandered from room to room, somberly trying to take it all in. The Archives’ collection of important governmental records runs to about twelve billion pieces of paper, including all documents associated with Supreme Court cases. In the “Courting Freedom” room, warrants for fugitive slaves were displayed under glass. Chad paused for a long moment at a mural depicting a courtroom scene, under the words WHEN HAVING THE MOST VOTES IS NOT ENOUGH.

  “Your records will be here in twenty to twenty-five years,” Jesika Jennings, an Archives employee, told the plaintiffs, adding that she was honored to show them around. “It’s like having the opportunity to give Rosa Parks a tour of the Declaration and the Constitution.”

  Later that night, when everyone sat down in a cozy private room at the Jefferson Hotel, Chad gave a toast. The gang was all there: The Reiners and Ken Mehlman had joined them for dinner, as had David and Mary Boies. Olson was still working, polishing, absorbing.

  No one was in celebration mode yet, Chad said when he stood. But they had arrived at the place where they had set out to be.

  “Folks told us to slow down. But we gave hope to those thousands and thousands of Californians just by sta
nding up for them,” he said. “This case—it’s gone from being a case of a small group of people to being everyone’s case. This case is now America’s case, and it was birthed by everyone in this room.

  “One more chapter. Tomorrow. And may we all have the best of luck. I love you all.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  KENNEDY V. KENNEDY

  Did you sleep last night?,” Jeff asked his mom.

  It was a little after 6 A.M., and the two couples and their families were gathering in the lobby of the Palomar Hotel, where everyone was staying. Outside, a bus was waiting to take them to Chad’s apartment.

  “No. You know me.”

  He checked his phone. Facebook was a sea of red; the campaign asking people to replace their profile photos with the red Human Rights Campaign marriage equality logo had gone viral; more than 2.77 million users in the United States alone had joined in, plus tens of thousands more in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and even far-off Australia. On Twitter, celebrities were cheering the plaintiffs on. Beyoncé, a mega R&B star who was married to the rapper Jay-Z, posted a scanned handwritten note on a red sheet of paper to her account on the photo-sharing site Instagram: “If you like it you should be able to put a ring on it,” she wrote, a twist on the lyrics to her hit song “Single Ladies,” along with the hashtag “#wewillunite4marriageequality.”