Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality (58 page)

“In the eyes of the government, my family is finally normal,” Spencer Perry told reporters after the Ninth Circuit victory, as his twin brother, Elliott, and mom listen and Sandy fights back tears.

Olson practices his Supreme Court argument in a moot court session. Over and over, he returned to the fact that on fourteen different occasions, the Supreme Court had declared marriage to be a fundamental right. “No one in the country as good as he is,” Boies said of his partner’s Supreme Court advocacy. Four years of work, boiled down into a twenty-minute argument. “It’s a diamond that’s been polished and set.”

Enrique Monagas, the young lawyer who filed the original complaint in the case, holds up his smartphone so everyone can watch the plaintiffs’ appearance on the nightly news. From left to right, Paul’s sister, Maria McGuire, AFER board member and AIDS quilt creator Cleve Jones, Paul, Enrique, Jeff Zarrillo, and Jeff’s parents, Linda and Dominick, look on. “I couldn’t do this,” Monagas, who is gay, said. “I couldn’t put myself in this situation of being the face of this movement.”

After her husband took the case, joked Lady Booth Olson, the Olsons’ social circle changed. Here, Ted Olson talks to top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Chad at a cocktail party in honor of the plaintiffs in Georgetown. The party was held after intense internal White House deliberations over whether the Obama administration should file a brief with the Supreme Court that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. 

Jeff and Paul share a kiss at Chad’s apartment on the morning of the Supreme Court arguments. Also pictured are Kris, Sandy, and AFER staffers Elizabeth Riel and Melissa Gibbs.

Before the challenge to Proposition 8 was even filed, Rob Reiner made a prediction: “We are going to the Supreme Court! And we are going to win!” Here, the movie director stands outside the nation’s high court on the morning of oral arguments with his wife, Michele Reiner, Adam Umhoefer, and AFER board members Lance Black and Ken Mehlman, who ran George W. Bush’s reelection campaign and played a critical role in galvanizing Republican support for same-sex marriage.

Edie Windsor after her case challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act was argued before the Supreme Court. Though they were legally married, Edie and her wife, Thea, were treated by the government as legal strangers after Thea passed away, sticking the widow with a $363,000 estate tax bill. Her lawsuit, like the one challenging Prop 8, was filed against the better judgment of the gay rights legal community, which worried that a premature challenge could lead to a Supreme Court setback.

The Proposition 8 plaintiffs arrive at the Supreme Court to hear the decision of the justices. “No matter what happens, we won,” Kris said on the bus ride over.

Days after the Supreme Court ruling, a record 1.5 million celebrated equality at the San Francisco gay pride parade.

For Chad and the plaintiffs, it was the gay equivalent of a ticker-tape parade after winning the Super Bowl. Here, Chad snaps a photo of signs featuring the stick-figure family that supporters of Proposition 8 had used as a logo during the campaign to reinforce their “Protect Our Children” motto, only now the figures were standing on their heads, beneath a single word: “Overturned.”

Marriage is the “principal happy ending in all of our tales,”
one expert witness testified during the trial. Here, Kris and Sandy finally get theirs, exchanging vows on a balcony at San Francisco City Hall.