to strike down the defense of marriage act. this program is about an hour. >> it's wonderful to be here today. we have so much to talk about. i thought that it would be useful to share with people a former how you came to write the book and the experience and then step back and talk about the framing of the book and get back into some officials you make in the book. so the book is called forcing

the spring but the first title is inside the fight for marriage equality. they challenged the proposition which is of course the amendment that took away the marriage rights for the same-sex couples. i'm interested in how this came to pass. use at the end that you got interested in the story because you interview with ted olson and reported on his running out in favor of marriage equality so i'm curious to did you make the first phone call to the team to cover the story? >> guest: i did. i picked up the title that followed a lawsuit and i thought

whatever the story is it's got to be a fascinating story so i was in between the investigators projects and i picked up the phone and called its not investigative. i do these but i am just really fascinated by this and i'm the only person he would talk to at "the new york times." >> host: did you make the first call about writing about? >> guest: i called chad griffin in the foundation to

form the lawsuit and i said i always knew that i would know what the right book was. every journalist thinks that they have a book and i have to go passionate and very just i will know it when i see it and i knew that this was the book i wanted to write and i wanted to write it for so many reasons because it was a fascinating group of people in the course of reporting the story and got to know the plaintiffs at the heart of the lawsuit and i was captivated and i wanted to find out what would happen to them. this was a controversial strategy to take the call to the supreme court and they could wind up heroes. >> how much did you know and how

much have you reported on the civil rights movement before? >> i did all of the background in but not about this issue except for i cover the legislatures and this was a partnership in the civil unions legislation that would come up in each of them in early 2,000 it's funny to think today that that was controversial so i covered the battle not in the landmark cases that you were involved in. >> host: what kind of

involvement in did you have in the establishment and what experience have you had in the organization that had been leading the civil rights? >> to the extent i covered the date in the civil union but over the course of the last five years i got to know many of the leaders in massachusetts. not as much time as i would have liked. i thought that i heard them challenge as well as the lawyer and as i was watching the cases move along kind of simultaneously in the case hers would be the one that took but it didn't turn out that way. >> host: you talked about unfettered access to the

foundation on equal rights and the campaign but is the largest political advocacy group and i personally love this sort of fly on the wall story and there are many things in your accounting that i found interesting. you've got to know them quite well. >> i was with them for everything that they did. i probably arrived about i would guess eight or nine days before.

then we would go back to the political room where he was mounting this huge public education campaign that was going to be run in conjunction with this lawsuit. and so what is interesting to me as they are reading this book is they are finding out things they didn't know because i was the only one crossing from room to room. >> let me ask you if the they vy intense experience and i had the impression that you were part of that intensity, that there is a kind of breathlessness to the experience and i wonder if you felt part of the team and however you felt did you think k the others thought you as part of the team since you had these close relationships.

>> guest: the challeng >> guest: the challenge to some extent is to try to disappear so people just don't notice that you're in the room and there are scenes in the book that people love and there are scenes in the book people say i wish he wasn't there for that particular moment but i just disappear and i would show up and over five years you drive to court with people inside the drive to every court battle and be in the car with chris & e. to the extent everybody was sitting around waiting for decisions and we were having coffee or pastries or eating way too much. >> host: you said you were a -- >> guest: i am a journalist. i am an observer of the team, but i wasn't a part of the team. >> let's just step back. the title of the book is inside of the fight for marriage in

quality and at the end you have a section where you talked about you describe the book as giving an inside account of the chapter in the nation's civil rights history that is the fight for marriage a quality. ane. quality. and i guess the book struck me as something different from bad as primarily a story about more limited and not so rounded a story in the sense that it develops the pro- marriage equality than the arguments against you. you explain that in the book but more than that it focuses on the small group of people, very well-connected and prominent, but a small group of people that offers a largely although not entirely critical take on their efforts to the marriage rights through a high-profile case. so i'm having a hard time squaring of marriage e the marry

and the account of the chapter in the nation's history from the beginning of the proposition eight lawsuit after the supreme court struck down and didn't decide tdid itdecide to target . so tell me about that. >> guest: it took years of work by many, many people to get to the point in history that i chose to write about. so this is one chapter in a much larger narrative but it's important in my mind because it's the chapter about when some people in the movement decided to take the marriage equality to the united states suprem suprem, and that is what i chose to write about and i'm very gratified "the new york times" called it a stunningly intimate story. and that's the story, that is what i said out to do. i was fascinated. i wanted to know what would it feel like to be a plaintiff civil rights case, one that is incredibly high-profile and

controversial. what did that feel like, what was the judge thinking in one of the crazy twists in the story he turned out himself to be gay. what does it feel like to want something that everybody else has. >> host: i think that you talk very compellingly about the two couples, the four plaintiffs. to ask in another way it seems you told that story of this group and their litigation that doesn't seem to be an account of the chapter in this nation's civil rights history in the sense that both leaving aside what we said before even what was going on at that time in thn

terms of people making the claims for marriage equality. there was this lawsuit, there was litigation around the country i'm sure as you know. maybe we can talk about what was happening before the proposition wall suit was filed but just to share with our listeners. several months before, and advocacy had filed a lawsuit challenging the federal defense of marriage act and in particular challenging that law on the ground that the federal government was refusing to recognize the valid marriages of many couples into the harm that that was causing. and that lawsuit had been withheld in the publication that had been ruled out for years.

but before the iowa supreme court has recognized the marriage and they were on the verge of the legislature granted the right to marry. it is an interesting sliver of the chapter of the nations civil rights history. >> guest: there was a lot going on but one of the things in reporting this book is as you said she was the first debate first person to file the state wall suit and that thought that it would be risky. both mary and robbie who ended up taking the case had parts in

the case of that hospices and the federal court is into the route to go. it was a very real concern. i talk about this in the chapter where the group in the proposition eight lawsuit which that is so much more controversial than the lawsuit that was asking for less. it was asking for the recognition of the legally valid lawsuit so even that was controversial so when the case was filed, john davidson said he was invited to a lunch that had the director attracting a lot of the funding in the lawsuit and

he faulted th thought the conves disrespectful and ignorant of the fact that many people thought of this into the ide anf the lawsuit was hardly knew. you were with paul smith in the case that was one of the landmark cases that predated this litigation that i'm writing about and it struck down the law, and he had approached him as a counsel in the proposition eight case, and he had thought of this after he won the war in case and we ought to be able to get married and he thought he talked extensively to the clerks of justice kennedy to the vote on all of these issues. he was told by the clerks that it's a big job that the justice

kennedy is flowing opinion in the case that didn't necessarily mean they couldn't criminalize. >> so you described the book, you said in the book it would be an incredibly talking about the lawsuit. the movement was made up of a constellation of established groups that have been fighting for the equal rights and that they woul would up and the state strategy that groups had been pursued, and then you go on to say at the time they were two states that allowed. they shared a willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom especially if they believed that they were not good enough and you go on to talk about in the book starting a revolution. about two again speak on the framing of the book it seems to me that this story is happening

alongside so much other work, and that work gets either largely dismissed were you sort of right about the establishment being conservative and then pushing against this bold idea or we mentioned mary twice in the whole book and most people think of her as the architect. >> host: it is an important piece but it is just a piece of the struggle about marriage. i think for the same reason the cases are interesting they are inherently interesting. certainly they are interesting to me. they have been beautiful books

written about the larger movement and i'm sure that there will be many more that have written about the subject of the bitter because the americas that haven't made up their mind can decide what they want to think about this issue, so the more books, the better. >> i learned things from this book and i found it interesting. people pick up a book that says inside of the fight for marriage equality and think they are reading a book about marriage equality when what they are really reading about is a story of chad griffin and ted olson and their team with the plaintiffs bringing a lawsuit that did not.

it doesn't seem to very seriously. >> guest: i would have to disagree. i think that when i'm talking about john davidson feeling disrespected we are going to file a federal lawsuit. so we talk about it. it wasn't that anybody disagreed with the goal, with the end goal. everybody wanted to see that happen and understood how important it is that the supreme court would validate this community. >> they don't understand why this is an issue. the question was how fast and

it's an important question and i think that was really concerned a lot of people but also the litigation and the decision of course upheld a law. what happened as it was just a terrible step back. it was used as a precedent for all sort of other things. >> and then what happened is there was a slow building effort. people wanted marriage in mary y and even in the 1970s and in the '80s people were bringing marriage equality. people have been thinking about this issue. you start the book and you say this is how the revolution

begins. she refuses to give up her seat in the segregated south into "a 35-year-old political consultant named chad griffin in the st. francis hotel in election night. before i ask about chad i have to ask it is not a secret that was it part of the resolution and even rosa parks herself was recovered about a year ago. it was also part of an organized social movement and i know sometimes in speeches people talk about rosa parks starting a revolution but i was surprised to see that in the book and i wondered did rosa parks start the revolution and if not, what were they trying to do?

>> guest: what i was trying to say is there are moments in history where somebody does something and it's -- it changes the direction. i think we can all agree that when rosa parks sat down in her seat on that bus, it meant something. and a hugely important moment. the "washington post" i and a great review i was thrilled and she goes on to back it up, so i think that's what is revolutionary about what happened is that a group of people decided that they were going to bring the federal resolution as much as the people

that have been working on these issues very hard and what is interesting and vibrant love to talk to you more about it is this concept of time in the book because two people say it all turns out fine in the supreme court they didn't want to be the cocounsel it was risky but they were trying to do and all the progress that had been made. but by the end he's sitting in the court listening to the arguments on the other hand, paul is the justice kennedy clerk also talking about this kind of time element and the

lawyer that fought to keep the proposition eight, you know, chad cooper very deliberately flew down on the case because he be leaved that it was in his interest to have the case argued at the same time because maybe justice kennedy -- so do you be leaved -- do you think that he started a revolution in the quality -- >> host: is a revolutionary step. >> guest: also i think what happened as a result of this litigation was this enormous public education vehicle that was built around the litigation that was attracted from the first ladies communication

director to the first lady press secretary. this was fascinating. one of the things interesting to me especially as a reporter was to be in the political room and watch as they were pitching my colleagues. >> it is a super interesting story. i guess where i am resisting you to some degree is that it seems to me to be the revolutionary gap began. i think the resistance is not to the story.

in the case this case couldn't have been bothered with f. you personally argue. if there is any claim where they thought, you know, let's start thinking about the lg bt writes. if it can pass here how can we continue to fight. it's just people that care about civil rights across the country.

the ongoing litigation on the marriage he quality when we go back to the timing issue they said chuck cooper knew and many people believed that it was important for the case to go slowly because that actually did happen for the states to recognize marriage he quality and more prominent people from both sides of the idol to come around and to support marriage he quality. you tell us that at the numberf points in the book chad griffin wanted to do today or case fast and they were frustrated. you said chad wanted to scream

and there was another nice example and you say judge reinhardt states the case for that even though they were upset by the delay. >> host: you said they wanted to beat the cases to the supreme court. and i wondered why you think that is the case because i don't think anybody thought that it would be bad for the supreme court to hear and strike down at the same time that he is addressing the issue of marriage equality for same-sex couples around the country. so, do you think that it was more it doesn't sound like this thinking to me. >> guest: with the layout for the thinking was on either side. a lot of people have processed about like it was fortunate and lucky for them. it's to speed it up, not to slow

it down. that is exactly what i'm saying, it is fortunate for them that they didn't get their way and that this case didn't move as slowly as they did it because it allowed the country to move in the direction of marriage equality and created an atmosphere that was much more conducive to the supreme court ruling. and that was why when he came in on the morning of the argument he wasn't too worried that something would happen. on the other hand, the lawyer that is fighting to keep proposition eight thought that it was actually a good thing for him in other words that this case had moved so slowly because what he had hoped is in slowing the case down to the berkeley several times what he hoped to accomplish is that if they were due at the same time that potentially they could split and to say while, the federal

government needs to recognize the marriages that take place in the places it's already legal that it's okay and the states can decide for themselves and go ahead and opposed proposition eight but that didn't happen. you have many people in the establishment and also the lawyer and the two people that brought thbought the case of di. i don't think that we know. it's one of the things that is an interesting tension in the book. tim is always up attention. one thing they worry about is what if president obama wasn't elected. he didn't go to the term.

you just never know. whawhat if mitt romney was elecd president and got to pick a new member of the supreme court and replaced. it became exponential so that was an issue early on. >> everybody was right in a way. clearly the atmosphere was the time that elapsed it created a more hospitable political climate. at the same time, paul clement argued the case as well as chuck cooper refused that political progress and it's sort of hard for in the weeds like we are but they use that as an argument that the courts don't need to decide this. get all of the progress that has been made.

>> host: we are going to take a break and then we will think about which case had the impact because you refer to the other case that's turned out to be the big victory case. >> host: picked up on the amendment and then we will go back. one of the things that struck me as you described the decision in the case is the decision that has now changed the landscape so that many that have struck down the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage after

these decisions come down and rely on windsor but i was struck with the way that you described it because you almost make it sound like justice kennedy is the language in the opinion and the recognition of the dignity of people and the right to marry really came from ted olson. you have a paragraph in the book where you quote quote them and e kennedy and you go back and forth and it was striking to me for two reasons because one, a lot of the language seemed to come from the brief that the team feingold and also it wasn't often the case and i wondered why and i wondered if it was a bit of an effort to have the team have more play in the decision then perhaps -.

>> one of the interesting things about the case is tha cases thaa tension between the two cases. as they were already married what she was trying to convince the court to do in the brief when she talks about this she's trying to make it seem like this is a tax case. i am not asking for some big historic landmark thing in here he finds himself having to argue alongside of olson who is absolutely saying i want a lower -- large revision and there's this tension that sort of doubles up a little bit and of course the courts are aware.

if he wins i am going to win, too but if he loses i don't want to go down with them. they didn't want them arguing alongside each other. it was a beautiful thing because if you are there as i was and you start people watching to get married doesn't matter on a technicality. they have the largest state in the union and in the country and they are now able to marry and that was a pretty big victory. it's not the victory that they set out to have, but it is a two d. big victory. in the case she said as if she was looking back she didn't want to go down because he was

alongside making these big arguments that, you know, maybe that's why kennedy ended up sort of being as sweeping as he did. he didn't have to write the opinion the way that he did. >> guest: i'm excited to see the justice papers and what they were actually thinking because these lawyers are speculating about what they did and why they did it. >> host: just so the listeners are clear, when his case want on that technicality, the walls who actually didn't win in the supreme court. as you know what happened, the court held that they didn't have the authority to have the case and the winning opinion was the trial court's opinion just a couple of years ago. >> i know and have worked with robbie for a long time, but i think that she would be

surprised to hear that she was giving -- she was suggesting -- >> the rest of the decision came from -- that the claims to dignity came from the brief when the people can take a look at the bridge for themselves but the story in the brief is about the dignity of respecting people's lives and marriages. >> guest: there are several people in the courtroom that started to cry. it was a validation. but she talked about the importance of marriage. justice kennedy talked again and again and came back to the several times on the importance of marriage into so i think that these arguments were, that wasn't at the center of the case

but it was important in with the society saw. so i think that it may well not really know she felt like it was a potentially very good thing that her case was argued alongside the proposition case and perhaps that justice kennedy would be a bit broader than he might otherwise have been. >> let me go back in the book. you talk a lot, and i immediately get up on the language of chad griffin about the establishment and that they didn't want the law suits to be brought in and was slowing things down and that's where they've taken the criticism. from my perspective some of the

commentary in the book gives another perspective on the establishment and he is very much buying into the view of chad griffin and the other nonlawyer activists that the long-standing groups were slowing things down in properly. you talk a lot about evan wilson who created the freedom to marry project and wanted to be an architect of this. but this is coming from a lot of criticism, because you see the establishment was sort of slowing things down, and we described in a critical way his pushback against some of the other characters and the people

in the book you suggested that they came from the time that gay people -- when they had grown up in the world where they were not forced to congregate, and i guess it struck me i've worked with them for a long time he's not that old. you are getting a lot of pushback in the press and even for suggesting that he was a bit of an outsider which he is in the law firm that they argued the case in new york. it is a high-stakes game and i understand and i try to describe why people were so fearful.

look, they could have lost. we don't know. that's why the concept of time if it hadn't gone down, maybe we don't know. maybe they would have lost. and so what i've tried to do here is talk about that tension and it even played out internally. i may not have, you know, what i try to do is write what i saw and it is end. it's an intimate look about what they were thinking and feeling in the therand there are momenty all have moments of doubt. let's talk about. stewart because she is a lawyer to win marriage equal to the income of four and at the supreme court and that is what they stripped away. so that external debate that

played out in the larger community was also playing out in spite of this case. and as much as she wanted to win big there were moments that she filed a separate brief but argued in a lost kind of broad sweeping way that creates tension. he doesn't want her to do it and gets back off and it's not that terri didn't want want the big. but she talks about when she would go to the california supreme court and was making the argument that one marriage quality she carried the pain of the community in the briefcase and early on some of the sword of young lawyers annoyed her a little bit as an antitrust case.

one of the things interesting in the book that there were the lawyers on the team and it wasn't just so much to the table. >> host: they didn't bring experience in this kind of litigation in the commercial litigation experience. i'm sure that you would like to respond to this because there has been a lot of commentary about the book that said that you've glorified chad griffin while disregarding the work of other leaders and as a result of being embedded in that group they were never able to gain that perspective and if you had

it coming to you lost it. it's coming from a certain quarter and they've been amazing. look i sent off to write a book about what it feels like to really want something other people have and those stories about the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were so moving that the lawyer that fought them all the way to the supreme court when they saw them getting married on tv, she said i couldn't help but rejoice. what an amazing statement. and i would think that everybody in the world that cares about this issue would want people to read the book. >> the plaintiffs are very supporting and you paint a

beautiful picture of them in the book. i guess the question again reports to be about their stories but what about the risk that because you got so close to them you were not able to gain the perspective not on the plaintiffs of human beings, but on -- >> guest: i didn't set out to right the history, i set out to tell the five years between the passage of proposition eight and the time that the supreme court heard these cases and the transformation of the country i wanted to do that in a very intimate way. i thought there would be other books and that's great. i wanted to tell a story about the people and i do think that the perspectives that we are

talking about spending a lot of time talking about our very much in the buck very different characters and they talk a little bit about the frustrati frustration. he was frustrated. he is also a towering figure in the movement. he was frustrated with where the movement was. when a proposition eight past, they were zero for 30 at the ballot box and they have been targeted more often than any other group in america by these initiatives and it was a sort of low point there was a feeling among this group of people that i followed them and absolutely this is what i did for five yearget for fiveyears i followef people and their frustrations. but there are also moments that

are in this telling for instant you find out that the way that it's told it's like hollywood puts together the data. they all say that two people turned it down. the two people were towering figures in the movement, but i don't want any part of your case. i think it is terribly risky. >> host: part of what made me want to ask the question is there a losing perspective when you are in bed there are certain points in the book that suggested that chad griffin with the campaign came up with certain ideas so we will give you two examples. at one point, you tell it quite nicely about the bipartisan buildubillthat had the support e marriage equality and then you said a number of groups resorting to borrow from the

playbook and you mentioned the republican lobbyist. hell was it just a big deal for chad griffin to get them on board because he's a republican leader. did you think that they were not working before they wrote the playbook backs >> guest: i spent a whole chapter on new york which is a fascinating state legislative battle. and what happened in new york of course. but andrew called all of the groups together and he said i don't want to repeat, but the groups have been disorganized. they haven't worked well together and they put someone in charge. it's not just in this book but it's also in "the new york times." one of the characters in the book that i find interesting is

kenneth who of course is the architect of the election. he came out specifically to join the group in the lawsuit. he knew ted olson. it was controversial at the time because of course he was widely seen as the architect of some of the bands that were put on the ballot. but he worked really hard not just in new york but all to cast this issue i think that he was important in terms of he showed republicans why this wasn't in their interest long-term to be against marriage equality. did you know in 2004 that among

many others they worked closely with republicans and that continued in vermont and its continued elsewhere? it's not the information and the stories that you tell our great. they were taking a page out of the playbook and it struck me as a pretty serious mischaracterization. >> guest: this issue has gone from being publicly viewed as an approved partisan to not so much partisan and through the civil rights kind of basic american fundamental value plan. many people deserve that. i wrote about a particular group of people i think they're interesting and areinteresting e viewers find them interesting and compelling.

>> it is just a question of the architecture that you built up around them and will people take away from the book something that isn't so true that these ideas that were used in the media and working with the grassroots. >> guest: you have seen an amazing shift in the last five years. really astonishing. if you go back and talk to people that do political strategies and it's the fastest shift in the public opinion in the modern political history. with this litigation solely responsible for it, it was not. but the bottom line is five years ago in the two states the

majority of the americans opposed. today you have 17 states, and the majority of the americans support the right. and it's not just that it is not just a demographic change. what you see is a quarter of the people in the marriage equality used to think something different and i think that is the result of first of all it is the result of people coming out. if we are going to talk about credit, let's start with the fact is people coming out. it's people saying that whether it is ten or anybody else and then you realize that's my lawyer. that's why doctor, that's the one that reelected bush. they find out in this book

midway through the case that his daughter was a and is now about to get married in massachusetts and he is joyfully planning the wedding. that changes everything. rob portman is a wonderful example. absolutely opposed and finds out that his son is and right before the case heard these and he was the republican senator. people coming out and telling their story whether it is the plaintiffs becoming known to america, that's where the credit totally begins. >> guest: as the organizations have been working for a very

long time and is the foundation on which. >> host: when they've written a book and you show the commentary about it is there anything that you would change about the book if you were to revise it now lacks >> guest: i hope that there will be many other books. this is an incredibly important moment in american history and american civil rights history, and i think that there will be a lot. i think i read that and i'm looking forward to that. i think the more that -- again if we start in the premise that telling stories matter when people come to know through the book or their neighborhood or their school that that is a powerful thing that changes

minds than the more they can be written about, the better. >> host: that is one of the things that transforms the society. >> guest: i devote a chapter to a screenwriter when does a pink with the hope had been an incredible trial and you have evidence about parenting and all this stuff they thought that it would be perfect if you could televise this and it was to educate people that might be on this issue and of course the supreme court said no and it was very frustrating for the people in the case when they thought that it was a great public education opportunity. and so the academy award-winning

screenwriter wrote a play and they put on display and the judge in the case told me it was broadcast on youtube and had 1.5 million hits and they said if this had been broadcast if the child was broadcast, 1.5 million people -- george clooney was playing one of the lawyers a lot of people tuned in and hollywood also has a real role. with shows like glee and modern family. if you want some more there is a worry that i have about the book that isn't about the dramatic telling of the story, which

again i quite enjoyed. it is the impression that i think it tries to leave, which is that this is an account of the chapter in american history running from the proposition eight through the decision not to decide the case and it's a great story. >> host: i thank you very much for sharing with us this conversation about the fight for marriage equality.

>> that was after words booktv signature program in which authors of the books were interviewed by journalists, public policpublic policymakerss and others familiar with their material. after words airs every weekend at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch online. go to booktv and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page.