Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality Read Online Free PDF Page A

and themore liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a tradition of spending New Year’s Eve at the Olsons’ home, with Justice Ginsburg’s husband cooking up game that Justice Scalia had shot on a hunting trip.
    Olson believed that a majority would find bans like Proposition 8 unconstitutional, but each would have issues that would need to be addressed, he said. Justice Ginsburg, for instance, had stated publicly that she believed the Court moved too far too fast in finding a constitutional right to abortion in its 1973
Roe v. Wade
decision. Despite her support for abortion rights and her place as an anchor of the Court’s liberal wing, she felt that the Court had short-circuited the democratic process and might have avoided backlash had it allowed more states to take the lead in legalizing abortion before issuing such a sweeping decision.
    She could have similar concerns about same-sex marriage. Abortion was legal under some circumstances in twenty states when
Roe
was handed down, eighteen more than currently allowed same-sex marriage. And although public attitudes on same-sex marriage were shifting, particularly among young people, the majority of Americans remained opposed.
    “This isn’t about winning five to four—this is about winning as many of the nine as you can,” Olson told the group. “So you need to run nine separate cases at once.”
    Rob Reiner was struck by how similarly Olson and he viewed the case: Both saw the battle for marriage equality as one of the last pieces in the American civil rights puzzle, the only arena left in which the government openly discriminated against its citizens. Still, he asked, “Won’t this cause issues for you both professionally and personally within your circle in D.C.?”
    “No,” Olson replied. “I’ve been in the eye of the storm before, and if I believe in something, I do it.” Pausing, he looked around the table. “I will not just be some hired gun,” he said. “I would be honored to be the voice for this cause.”
    It was a turning point. Until then, the group had been feeling Olson out. Now the discussion turned to the way forward.
    Olson was willing to take the case for a discounted, flat-rate fee: $2.9 million plus expenses to take the case to the Supreme Court. The Reiners and Chad said they would begin looking for potential donors, while quietly sounding out activists in the gay rights community.
    But Olson’s involvement was deemed by the group to be so potentiallyexplosive among conservatives and gay activists alike that everyone was sworn to secrecy on that front. Olson, for his part, promised to take the lead in finding a Democratic co-counsel with sterling credentials, to help alleviate the suspicion his involvement was sure to engender on the left.
    In the meantime, he said, the first order of business was to find sympathetic plaintiffs who wanted to get married but could not because of the passage of Proposition 8. The couples should be in long-term, committed relationships, Olson advised, and they should be regular folks whom people could identify with, not activists or celebrities.
    “I want a teacher, a police officer, and someone who owns a bookstore,” he said.
    Hugging Olson as he walked him to the door, Rob Reiner couldn’t contain himself. “We are going to the Supreme Court!” he declared. “And we are going to win!”

THREE
“JUST WAIT”
    O n March 9, 2009, Chad strode through the modern lobby of the Creative Artists Agency in Century City, California, home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. A friend, a top talent agent there, had suggested he meet with one of Creative Artists’ most promising young screenwriters.
    His name was Dustin Lance Black, and he had just won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for
Milk,
the movie starring actor Sean Penn as the gay rights activist Harvey Milk that Cohen had produced.
    Chad had heard about Black through Cohen, and he had come to the meeting hoping to enlist his help