Top 11 Quotes & Sayings by Evan Wolfson

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an attorney Evan Wolfson.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Evan Wolfson

Evan Wolfson is an attorney and gay rights advocate. He is the founder of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States, serving as president until its 2015 victory and subsequent wind-down. Wolfson authored the book Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, which Time Out New York magazine called, "Perhaps the most important gay-marriage primer ever written". He was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. He has taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, Rutgers Law School, and Whittier Law School and argued before the Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. He now teaches law and social change at Georgetown Law School and at Yale University; serves as a senior counsel at Dentons, the world's largest law firm; and primarily provides advice and assistance to other organizations and causes, in the United States and globally, that are seeking to adapt the lessons on "how to win" from the same-sex marriage movement.

Attorney | Born: February 4, 1957
Courts should always do the right thing. But if winning were as simple as making a good argument and filing a good brief, then we would have won the freedom to marry 40 years ago. We must put the legal work next to the public education work next to the legislative work next to the organizing work, and that's what's brought us so far.
Marriage is also a social statement, preeminently describing and defining a person's relationship and place in society. Marital status, along with what we do for a living, is often one of the first pieces of information we give to others about ourselves. It's so important, in fact, that most married people wear a symbol of their marriage on their hand.
What is so powerful here is that we have the first federal appellate court and it's a case coming out of Utah affirming in the strongest, clearest, boldest terms that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry and equal protection for all Americans and all means all, including gay couples.
There is no marriage without engagement — © Evan Wolfson
There is no marriage without engagement
When it comes to federal programs, even if states are discriminating, the federal government should not.
I think there's tremendous significance and opportunity in Americans seeing legally married gay couples treated with respect in our nation's capital.
I'm not in this just to change the law. It's about changing society. I want gay kids to grow up believing that they can get married, that they can join the Scouts, that they can choose the life they want to live.
Marriage is a language of love, equality, and inclusion.
Marriage is not defined by who is denied it. When gay people share in the freedom to marry, it doesn't change your marriage.
My marriage is my marriage, and it means I'm able to share in the same aspirations of commitment and love and support and dedication and connectedness, and that my parents are able to dance at our wedding and that our family and friends are able to support and celebrate and hold us accountable for the commitment we've made to one another. That takes nothing away from anyone else.
Marriage ... has historically been a battlefield, the site of collisions within and between governments and religions over who should regulate it. But marriage has weathered centuries of skirmishes and change. It has evolved from an institution that was imposed on some people and denied to others, to the loving union of companionship, commitment, and caring between equal partners that we think of today.
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