There are a lot of first wedding anniversaries being celebrated by couples who raced to the altar after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the nation last year. Former Freedom to Marry President Evan Wolfson says many of those couples thought they’d never be able to make their union legal. Since the court’s decision, more than a million people have gotten married. Wolfson says most Americans have been embracing them.
“Public opinion polls that we’ve seen, including Gallup a few weeks ago, show that the public continues to support the freedom to marry, and for the first time ever we had the majority of support for people over 65.”
Wolfson says the hard work that secured the freedom to marry needs to continue.
“Let it be the gift that keeps on giving. The power of the marriage vocabulary are really powerful ways of changing hearts and minds, and we need to keep doing that, and then harnessing that empathy, that growing support to the remaining legal work that’s still ahead.”
Wolfson adds the focus now needs to be on anti-discrimination laws.
“We need to have a federal civil rights law. There is no federal civil rights law yet that expressly prohibits discrimination on sexual orientation or gender-identity grounds, and we need to see those laws as building blocks, or as gains in their own right at every level.”
Wolfson says work still needs to be done to secure equality for everyone, and to make sure no one is discriminated against whether it’s at the workplace, in housing, in a restaurant or in a bathroom.
