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By Evan Wolfson: A New Year's Message

Freedom to Marry
December 20, 2006

As 2006 winds down, it's a good time to take a look back, rest and recharge, and get ready to return in January for what already is shaping up to be a historic and potentially transformative year.

It's dawned on me in the past few weeks that 2006 was actually a pretty hard year, but, at the same time, a year in which supporters of the freedom to marry clearly made deep progress. Some of what made it hard:

• We had to endure a months-long rocky patch that ran from July's shabby and divided high court rulings in New York and Washington through to the unsatisfying but still historic unanimous decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court that put wind back in our movement's sails. Happily, though many feared a loss of momentum for marriage equality, no one walked away from the work at hand to win it... and we are very much back on the move.
• The right-wing continued their state-by-state assault on gay and unmarried couples and their kids, inscribing discriminatory language harmful to families and antithetical to American values into seven more state constitutions.
• Too many politicians and progressives continued to hesitate to make the case for justice unequivocally, sqaundering opportunities to engage the public deeper and faster and provide the reachable-but-not-yet-reached the leadership they are ready for as they wrestle with their own internal conflicts.
• There is a growing tendency among some allies, and even our own, to see marriage as "inevitable," and, perversely, therefore less urgently to be fought for. Too many let themselves off the hook in complacency, or with knee-jerk assertions that the time is not yet right, or with a condescending assurance that words don't matter, civil union or even less is good enough for now , and that the less will somehow morph by itself into marriage — on someone else's watch.

How do we know that the growing numbers of us who favor ending marriage discrimination are making progress? Well, amidst the challenges and beneath the surface, 2006 offered many indicators that Americans are ready to rise to the better angels of their nature and accept committed couples' freedom to marry:

• South Africa became the latest country, and the first in Africa, to end couples' exclusion from marriage, joining Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Spain, and, of course, 1/50th of the United States. Meanwhile, even more nations are moving in the direction of ending marriage discrimination through varieties of registered partnership (often for both same-sex and different-sex couples) in Andorra, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Uruguay, and in parts of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and the US. As the year ended, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples married elsewhere must have their marriages treated equally at home — a triumph for fairness and love in the Holy Land.
• Here at home in America, candidates who supported marriage were elected and reelected in droves in states from CA to MA to NH, states where they'd voted on marriage bills or against attacks, while anti-gay and anti-marriage legislators were defeated.
• Pro-marriage legislators increased in many states, and the country seemed to rouse itself and repudiate the divisive forces who have dominated the political landscape over the past several years.
• For the first time, every justice on a state high court held that committed same-sex couples must be treated equally (and 3 of the 7 justices, including the incoming chief justice, recognized that equal means equal, and that means marriage).
• The other disappointing court rulings were so feeble and hasty in applying a toothless standard of review to achieve the result and pass the buck to the legislature that they demonstrated anew that there is increasingly no tenable real argument justifying couples' exclusion from marriage.
• The anti-gay margins by which discriminatory ballot measures passed declined in many of the states, as documented well by the Task Force. Meanwhile, Arizona succeeded in defeating a constitutional amendment that would have denied important protections to non-gay and gay families alike, the first time we've beaten one on the ballot (as apart from the many we continue to block in legislatures), while the MA legislature definitively shelved the attempt to turn back the clock on marriage there.
• Elected officials continue to "evolve" in their position, from Senator Hillary Clinton, who says she no longer opposes marriage and believes committed same-sex couples should have full equality "with nothing left out," to incoming pro-marriage governors such as Eliot Spitzer in NY and Deval Patrick in MA.
• Despite the railroading through of a civil union bill instead of ending marriage discrimination in NJ, a joint effort by Garden State Equality and all the key national organizations made clear that marriage is the answer, and civil union merely a way-station — and got all the legislative leaders and the governor to say that marriage is now the goal. Far from getting stuck at civil union, advocates of fairness will mount a strong effort to win marriage within 1-3 years in NJ, several New England states, NY, and CA, and beyond.

Crucial battles loom in 2007 — including the Gettysburg that is California. As I wrote in Why Marriage Matters, the key to winning is conversation: Gay people talking to non-gay people about our lives, our love, and our commitment, and why marriage matters, and non-gay people speaking out for fairness and equality and treating people the way you'd want to be treated. Everyone can be a part of this conversation, and Freedom to Marry's team, including you, is committed to redoubling our work to bringing more people in and helping each of us make sure our voice is heard in 2007. Together, we are the ones making the "inevitable" happen. Someone's got to do it.

Happy New Year!