About the Author

Evan Wolfson is an attorney and gay rights activist. He founded Freedom to Marry, the gay and non-gay partnership that worked to win marriage equality nationwide until its 2015 victory. Before founding Freedom to Marry, Wolfson served as marriage project director for Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund, was co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case, Baehr v. Miike, and participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases. Between his studies at Yale College and Harvard Law School, Wolfson spent two years with the Peace Corps in West Africa and then worked as a state prosecutor and special counsel in the Iran/Contra investigation. Citing his national leadership on marriage equality and his appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the National Law Journal in 2000 named Wolfson one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. In 2004, he was named one of the Time 100, Time magazine's list of The 100 most influential people in the world.

Reviews

"Evan Wolfson's Why Marriage Matters should be required reading. Wolfson's clearly articulated arguments will encourage discussion..."
-- The Advocate

"Gay marriage is one of today's most hotly debated issues. Wolfson articulates the pioneering arguments that have made him one of the nation's most influential gay activists."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"One of the 100 most powerful and influential people in the world."
-- Time

"Perhaps the most important gay-marriage primer ever written....[A] cogent and moving argument..."
-- Time Out New York

"The distinctive gravity of marriage shines through Wolfson's stories of gay couples seeking recognition."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"This is one useful book. Armed with Wolfson's arguments, you could sell anyone with an IQ over room temperature on the wisdom and humanity of marriage equality."
-- The Oregonian

A nationally renowned attorney and director of Freedom to Marry, Wolfson hails the movement for marriage equality as "one of the first important civil rights campaigns of the 21st century" and grounds support for it within the logic of the long-established protest traditions in U.S. history: abolition, the women's suffrage movement and the racial equality movements of the 1950s and '60s. Unlike those who support gay marriage as a way to regulate what they see as the self-destructive sexual practices of homosexuals (David Brooks, Jonathan Rauch, Andrew Sullivan), Wolfson sidelines the issue of morality and discusses the right to marry as part of each citizen's inalienable claim to what the Declaration of Independence calls the "pursuit of happiness." Framing his argument strictly in terms of civil rights and grounding it in conventional definitions of the public significance of marriage, Wolfson is refreshing, smart, thorough and easy to follow. Most provocatively, Wolfson excises "gay marriage" from the debate entirely, writing that the term "impl[ies] that same-sex couples are asking for rights and privileges that married couples do not have, or for rights that are something lesser or different from what non-gay couples have. In fact, we don't want `gay marriage,' we want marriage." For now, it is available in Boston. Agent, Fred Morris for the Jed Mattes Agency. (Aug. 1) Forecast: Wolfson was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time in April. He will do a six-city tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

"Evan Wolfson's Why Marriage Matters should be required reading. Wolfson's clearly articulated arguments will encourage discussion..."
-- The Advocate
"Gay marriage is one of today's most hotly debated issues. Wolfson articulates the pioneering arguments that have made him one of the nation's most influential gay activists."
-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"One of the 100 most powerful and influential people in the world."
-- Time
"Perhaps the most important gay-marriage primer ever written....[A] cogent and moving argument..."
-- Time Out New York
"The distinctive gravity of marriage shines through Wolfson's stories of gay couples seeking recognition."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"This is one useful book. Armed with Wolfson's arguments, you could sell anyone with an IQ over room temperature on the wisdom and humanity of marriage equality."
-- The Oregonian