by Becker, Jo
Chad, reading it out loud: Author interview with Chad Griffin, December 3, 2012.
Chad had made something of a study: Author interview with Chad Griffin, August 6, 2010.
CHAPTER 20: THE SCIENCE OF SEXUALITY
“Gotta give Nielson credit”: Author interview with Ethan Dettmer, the Gibson Dunn attorney who handled Dr. Herek’s direct exam, January 22, 2010.
To stay awake at the counsel’s table: Author interview with Ted Boutrous, January 22, 2010.
But Cooper’s point was more nuanced: Author interviews with Chuck Cooper, May 8, 2013, and June 1, 2013.
Sandy was just grateful: Author interviews with Sandy Stier and Kris Perry, December 5, 2010.
But Posner’s writings: Richard Posner, “Gay Marriage—Posner’s Response to Comments,” The Becker-Posner Blog, July 24 2005, http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2005/07/gay-marriage--posners-response-to-comments.html.
It is, “if not genetic, certainly innate”: Author interview with Richard Posner, September 30, 2013.
Posner had also rejected: Richard Posner, “The Economics of Gay Marriage—Posner,” The Becker-Posner Blog, August 10, 2008, http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2008/08/the-economics-of-gay-marriage--posner.html.
Though Stewart knew the judge meant well: Author interview with Terry Stewart, December 1, 2010.
CHAPTER 21: THE PLAINTIFFS REST
Incendiary political messaging: Author interview with Ted Uno, January 24, 2010.
Other excerpts featured prominent: Plaintiffs’ Exhibit No. PX2554, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (No. C 09-2292 VRW).
In a confidential memo: National Organization for Marriage and American Principles in Action v. Walter F. McKee, et al., NOM Deposition Exhibit 12: “National Strategy for Winning the Marriage Battle dated December 15, 2009,” United States District Court for the District of Maine, unsealed March 26, 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/86834855/20100716-Doc-128b-NOM-Depo-Exhibit-2-NOM-Depo-Exhibit-12-Nat-l-Strategy-for-Winning-12-15-09.
“All it took when we asked someone”: Plaintiffs’ Exhibit No. PX0390, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
“We bet the campaign on education”: Jesse McKinley and Kirk Johnson, “Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage,” New York Times, November 14, 2008.
CHAPTER 22: COOPER’S TURN
First, he did not want to take a position: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
“Whatever good we could get”: Ibid.
Walker, though, was understandably reluctant: Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
One measure of political powerlessness: City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 445 (1985).
The law, which provided for additional federal penalties: James Brooke, “Witnesses Trace Brutal Killing of Gay Student,” New York Times, November 21, 1998.
Boies once told Terry Stewart: Author interview with Terry Stewart, undated.
A willingness to deviate: Author interview with David Boies, January 25, 2010.
Finally, Miller handed the marked-up report: Plaintiffs Exhibit No. PX0794A, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F.Supp.2d 921 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (No. C 09-2292 VRW), https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/09cv2292/evidence/PX0794A.pdf.
Even Cooper had to admit: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
“You make me sick”: Author interview with Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, December 5, 2010.
One day while they were in court: Author interview with Elliott Perry, August 25, 2012.
What was not okay with Spencer: Author interview with Spencer and Elliott Perry, August 25, 2012.
Kris called the Berkeley police: Author interview with Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, December 5, 2010.
Kris had tried to adopt: Author interview with Kris Perry, August 24, 2013.
CHAPTER 23: “A HIGH OL’ TIME OF IT”
“You know what I enjoyed?”: Author interview with David Blankenhorn, October 4, 2012.
“Boies made a big thing”: Ibid.
the “issue just hunts you down”: Ibid.
“I wasn’t going to be bullied”: Ibid.
“So, Exhibit A was Barack Obama”: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
“The impression he conveyed”: Author interview with David Blankenhorn, October 4, 2012.
“Olson and Boies want to make”: Author interview with David Blankenhorn, November 26, 2012.
“You’re a helluva good witness”: Author interview with David Blankenhorn, October 4, 2012.
Years later, Cooper had no regrets: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
“I guess I’ll see you later”: Author interview with Kristina Schake, February 10, 2010.
CHAPTER 24: VICTORY
Remember, she recalled telling her friend: Author interview with Kristina Schake, June 15, 2010.
And in the nation’s capital: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020903739.html.
On the legal front, a new study: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2010/06/07/peds.2009-3153.abstract?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Bos&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT.
Celebrities have huge online followings: Author interview with Jeremy Braud, AFER social media consultant, June 22, 2010.
“Her position is her position”: Author interview with Mike Murphy, December 11, 2013.
In San Francisco, David Boies and Ted Boutrous: Author interview with Lady Olson, August 4, 2010.
“We did that three or four times”: Author interview with Judge Vaughn Walker, November 21, 2012.
“I yelled, I screamed”: Author interview with Enrique Monagas, August 5, 2010.
He started whooping: Author interview with Rob Reiner, August 6, 2010.
“It’s like a love letter”: Author interview with Gabriel Catone, August 7, 2010.
Cohen realized just how big: Author interview with Bruce Cohen, August 7, 2010.
“Oh my God—Prop 8 is unconstitutional”: Author interview with Chad Griffin, August 6, 2010.
CHAPTER 25: A TRUMP CARD, RELUCTANTLY PLAYED
“If the governor and the attorney general”: Author interview with Matt McGill, July 9, 2013.
Both were assured: Author interviews with David Boies, Chad Griffin, and Adam Umhoefer, May 2013.
Boutrous had responded: Author interview with Terry Stewart, December 1, 2010.
When that failed to produce the desired result: Author interview with David Boies, December 4, 2010.
But in what now appeared a serious misstep: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
CHAPTER 27: WHEN A NIGHTINGALE SINGS
“I didn’t think I had earned that right”: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, October 22, 2013.
“I call Ted the nightingale”: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, November 17, 2010.
“Anyone who can get George Bush elected”: Author interview with Chad Griffin, December 3, 2010.
“Ken’s all in on everything he does”: Author interview with Mark Wallace, October 22, 2013.
“Coming out is hard”: Author interview with Kristina Schake, October 22, 2013.
“Ken spent a lot of time talking to them”: Author interview with Jim Messina, October 7, 2013.
“Over a million dollars”: Author interview with Bill Smith, August 12, 2013.
Mehlman also arranged a confidential meeting: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, October 19, 2011.
“You get to the point where”: Kenneth Lovett, “Gay Marriage Is Just One Vote Shy of Becoming Law in New York Despite Archbishop Dolan’s Objections,” New York Daily News, June 15, 2011.
“The vote is going to happen tonight”: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, October 1
9, 2011.
CHAPTER 28: SOME “GRIST FOR JUSTICE KENNEDY”
Cooper had been under pressure: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, January 18, 2012.
Living with the extended uncertainty: Author interview with Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, December 8, 2011.
Judge Reinhardt, he would later say: Author interview with Enrique Monagas, June 4, 2012.
Terry Stewart, listening: Author interview with Terry Stewart, February 12, 2012.
CHAPTER 29: 8
“They turned that trial”: Author interview with Mary Bonauto, November 11, 2012.
“No way,” he’d exclaimed: Author interview with Kristina Schake, July 2012.
After talking it over with Rosen: Author interview with Hilary Rosen, November 8, 2012.
But even his brother watched Glee: Author interviews with Adam Umhoefer, December 2010 and June 13, 2011.
CHAPTER 30: OBAMA “COMES OUT”
“The sense I got from him”: Author interview with Chad Griffin, April 19, 2011.
Reporting back to the AFER team: Author interviews with Adam Umhoefer and Amanda Crumley.
But as Chad watched the hosts’ two children: Author interview with Chad Griffin, May 14, 2012.
Sitting in his West Wing office: Author interview with Vice President Joseph Biden, October 9, 2013.
Several months before his vice president: The descriptions of internal White House deliberations contained in this section are based on author interviews with a half dozen senior White House officials, some of whom asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly.
“For as long as I’ve known him”: Author interview with David Axelrod, August 9, 2013.
“The notion that politically this is going to kill you”: Author interviews with Ken Mehlman, September 21, 2011, and May 18, 2012.
A massive survey of five thousand Republican: This is a survey by TargetPoint Consulting, on behalf of Project RightSide, conducted in October 2011. http://www.projectrightside.com/contentimages/PRS_ShiftingElec_infographic_21.pdf.
Mehlman’s takeaway: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, undated.
But she found the legal arguments: Author interviews with Elizabeth Riel, communications consultant for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and Lisa Grove, June 2012, and documents summarizing Grove’s analysis.
Inside the White House: Author interview with David Axelrod, August 8, 2013.
This is consistent with who you are: Jo Becker, “Valerie Jarrett Is the Other Power in the West Wing,” New York Times, September 12, 2012, A1.
“Good point,” he said Plouffe told him: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, May 18, 2012.
Then everyone scrambled: Author interview with Kristina Schake, October 10, 2013.
“He was very much at peace”: Author interview with David Axelrod, August 9, 2013.
“How can we ring the bipartisan bell”: Author interview with Chad Griffin, May 14, 2012.
When Mehlman first came out: Author interview with Ken Mehlman, September 9, 2012.
“If you are one of those who care”: Adam Nagourney, “A Watershed Move, Both Risky and Inevitable,” New York Times, May 10, 2012, A1.
CHAPTER 31: CHAD AND THE CASE ENTER A NEW PHASE
Olson had negotiated: AFER contract with Gibson Dunn.
That was still deeply discounted: Author interview with Bruce Cohen, March 2012.
“Hiring Chad was like”: Author interview with Richard Socarides, December 19, 2012.
“She said, ‘I was listening to a talk show’”: Author interview with Sandy Stier, December 8, 2011.
“Well, that’s okay”: Author interview with Elliott Perry, August 25, 2012.
“It just crushed me”: Author interview with Tom Stier, August 26, 2013.
“My mom was mine”: Author interview with Frank Stier, January 20, 2013.
“You wonder what people are going to say”: Author interview with Vaughn Walker, November 21, 2012.
“I told him he shouldn’t have given up”: Author interview with Vaughn Walker, November 21, 2012.
CHAPTER 32: A STAR WITNESS’S MEA CULPA
“I thought it was pretty lousy”: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013.
“Practically and strategically”: Author interviews with Chuck Cooper, June 1, 2013, and November 22, 2013.
“It’s not at all clear”: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, June 19, 2013.
“Getting to know them personally”: Author interview with David Blankenhorn, October 4, 2012.
“I believe I owe”: Benedict Carey, “Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure,’” New York Times, May 18, 2012, A1.
“Any case has its trying elements”: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, May 8, 2013.
“I still think that we were entitled to know”: Author interview with Chuck Cooper, December 10, 2013.
CHAPTER 33: CHAD’S BIG TEST
“Ellen DeGeneres has done more”: Author interviews with Terry Stewart and other lawyers on the call.
At a recent meeting: Author interviews with participants.
Polling showed that support: May 11, 2012, memo from Jan R. van Lohuizen, pollster for President Bush, to Project Right Side, http://www.projectrightside.com/contentimages/Same_Sex_Marriage_Memo_5.11.20121.pdf.
The Pew Research Center would soon release data: Pew Research Center poll, March 13–17, 2013.
“This is the most significant”: Author interview with Alex Lundry, December 2013.
causing some church leaders: Author interview with Barrett Duke, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, December 11, 2013.
Olson’s legal briefs: Author interview with Ted Olson, November 7, 2012.
Maine looked solid: Author interview with Marc Solomon, January 24, 2012.
By election day: Author interview with Marc Solomon, January 24, 2012.
But over lunch earlier that day: Author interview with Hilary Rosen, November 8, 2012.
“It was very challenging”: Author interview with Maggie Gallagher, November 6, 2012.
Most of the National Organization for Marriage’s budget: National Organization for Marriage Form 990 tax returns.
“Wake me up if anything changes”: Author interview with Ted Olson, November 7, 2012.
“Society has just changed”: Author interview with Dan Pfeiffer, November 14, 2012.
Indeed, it was a net positive: Author interview with Ralph Reed, November 22, 2012.
CHAPTER 34: “DON’T THEY HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT?”
At 9:30 A.M. on the morning of December 7, 2012: Author interview with Patricia McCabe Estrada, spokeswoman for the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the wake of the Brown decision: Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law —an American History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 182.
Still, the issue was judicial nitroglycerin: Pew Research Center, May 1, 2012, poll on Supreme Court Favorability.
Before he stepped down from the bench: Walter Dellinger, “Souter: A Last Lecture on Gay Marriage,” Slate, June 29, 2009, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_breakfast_table/features/2009/the_supreme_court_breakfast_table/souter_a_last_lecture_on_gay_marriage.html.
“This is why I believe in God”: Author interview with Edie Windsor and Robbie Kaplan, February 21, 2013.
In San Francisco, all four boys: Author interview with Tim McGinnis, November 22, 2012.
Whenever Olson had an argument: Author interview with Ted Olson, December 21, 2012.
Olson told Boies: Author interview with David Boies, October 5, 2012.
“I don’t have the faintest idea”: Author interview with Ted Olson, November 7, 2012.
Entire treatises have been written: Author interviews with more t
han a half dozen former Kennedy clerks, all of whom asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly.
“We must never lose sight”: Richard C. Reuben, “Man in the Middle,” California Lawyer, October 1992, 35.
“It was a very beautiful statement”: Justice Anthony Kennedy, interview by Bryan A. Garner, 2006–7, LawProse, http://www.lawprose.org/interviews/supreme-court.php?vid=kennedy_part_1&vidtitle=Associate_Justice_Anthony_Kennedy_Part_1.
“Sometimes you don’t know if you’re Caesar”: Richard C. Reuben, “Man in the Middle,” California Lawyer, October 1992 issue.
“The only person who should want this case”: Author interview with Paul Cappuccio, November 8, 2012.
In a conference room at Robbie Kaplan’s firm: Author interview with Edie Windsor and Robbie Kaplan, February 21, 2013.
“Yes!” he thought: Author interview with Enrique Monagas, December 7, 2012.
You won, the friend e-mailed: Author interviews with Vaughn R. Walker, November 21, 2012, and December 23, 2012.
“There’s only one Supreme Court”: Author interview with Bruce Cohen, December 17, 2012.
Nearby, the Reiners were in a theater: Author interview with Rob and Michele Reiner, December 8, 2012.
“David,” she said, hugging him: Author interview with Dawn Schneider, December 11, 2012, based on her notes.
Boies was less trusting: Author interview with Mary Boies, October 14, 2012.
She worried aloud: Author interviews with Dawn Schneider, December 11, 2012, and David Boies, March 2, 2013.
When the call was opened: Author interview with Ted Olson, December 21, 2012.
“Now,” Boutrous said: Author interviews with Ted Boutrous, December 17, 2012, and Ted Olson, December 21, 2012.
CHAPTER 35: SELMA TO STONEWALL
All of those voices were important: Author interview with Ted Olson, January 31, 2013.
“It adds institutional impetus and imprimatur”: Author interview with Amir Tayrani, February 8, 2013.
Conversely, if the administration failed: Author interview with David Boies, March 23, 2013.
What interest, asked one of the lawyers: The account of the January 18, 2013, meeting with the solicitor general is based on author interviews with Justice Department officials, Ted Olson, Terry Stewart, and David Boies.
