politics, to everyone in the audience i encourage you to purchase why it's okay to speak your mind thank you foryo your time and your many thoughtful questions if you would like to hear more conversations like today or interested in supportingupup our mission subse to the manhattan institute newsletter or make a donation there are links for doing so in the comments window on your screen. thank you again this is great. >> for you so much i really appreciate it and thank you everybody for the questions ♪ ♪

>> you're watching the tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction book authors every weekend, booktv television for serious readers. >> redeeming everybody i am the president of our chamber of commerce, welcome to the ninth comcast featuring author and conversation with volleyball, let me also bring you greetings and happy pride month on behalf of our chamber of commerce and the 90 day gay and lesbian chamber of commerce were proud to be partners with our good friend at books and books. for nearly 100 years our team has served the miami community and for the past year we've been engaged more openly and intentionally in the diversity, equity and inclusion space, this includes working closely with our member companies in the workforce to educate, inform and advocate around issues impacting

our lgbtq ia plus community. for the past 15 years i've been out and proud leader of our chamber and i'm equally proud of our partnership with such leading community voices at books and books. thank you to mitchell kaplan and christina for being incredible congeners around the conversations like bentonite regarding gay marriage. we are truly grateful to you. so tonight we will discuss the engagement of america's quarter century struggle with same-sex marriage and have a copy of the book and i will remind you there is a green button below where you see me and you can go and

buy this great book that you hear about a couple of minutes every one of the purchases supports our friends at books and books. independent bookstores need you now more than ever as do all of our local businesses. please make a purchase today. you may engage by placing questions in the chat and i will happily work with molly to moderate those at the end of the discussion. now on her program, first i want to welcome our author and featured speaker this evening sasha eisenberg the author of three previous books including the victory lab, the secret science of winning campaign he cover presidential elections at the national political reporter, the washington bureau of the boston globe columnist and a tribute to bloomberg politics and business week, he's a washington correspondent and his work has also appeared in new york, the new york times magazine and george were he served as a tubing after, he teaches of the political science department at the university of california of l.a. or ucla as we love to call it he will be joined in moderation by volleyball she's a national

political correspondent for time covering campaigns, the white house, political personalities and policy debates across america. she is also a frequent television and radio commentator she is the author of the new york times bestseller pelosi biography of the first woman speaker of the house. ladies and gentlemen you're in for a treat let's welcome sasha and molly. >> thank you. >> thank you so much, mark, thank you so much for coming and your interest in this wonderful book i heartily second what mark said you should read and more importantly by it that's why we are here tonight, i'm so excited to talk to my friend about a subject that we covered for many years and that i learned so much that i didn't already know from this great book, sasha why don't you kick us off by talking about

what inspired you to write this book how you got the idea and what moved you to write a book about it. >> thank you molly, i had an idea 2011 i was working on a book which mark mentioned talking to people who study public opinion, people repeatedly made a version of the same observation they have never seen opinion on a single issue moved away they've seen a move on marriage and then nobody had a good expedition to why that was and that stuck with me when i saw the new york senate vote to pass marriage equality act in new york and governor cuomo signed into law quickly in the summer of 2011 it was the first time i was convinced that he cover politics and how this is going to end and i certainly did not think it would happen as quickly and with a little as friction as it did but it seems there's only one trajectory that

she was going to take and people started to talk about the defining movements of our time the entirety had taken place during the years when i was alive and nobody had ever put together the story of where this came from and how it came to consumer politics and how we ended up reaching the time i was working on the book of a national resolution. >> one thing that is so amazing that you get the full 47 the narrative is how the issue, like an elephant moving through the digestive system of the book and took over politics for many years and then it was gone and then you write it never happened, we all decided to agree with a few exceptions it's really remarkable. what surprised you as your reporting this book what was the

biggest things that you had misconceptions about or that you had seen in the previous coverage the accidental origin with this cost, there is a desire and we think of it as a green american social movement for civil rights breakthroughs to assume this had a long slow development that there were people plotting from the beginning this is a suffrage movement that in 1872 people were thinking about taking this nationally these are the stories how school segregation were written, 40 year plan and it was hatched and how you would end up and we have a natural desire to retrofit that architecture onto these things because we end up to a point where we see as a matter of justice and equity and has to be inevitable ways been a

basic political and will demand. >> and in fact it was in my book starts in 1990 and there is basically no one in the united states who is for oregon same-sex marriage, there is hardly a politician that's ever been asked about it the major gay rights have not declared an objective in a major opponent of gay rights and that is something that they want to fight it does not exist an issue in the way that we think political issue what i ended up finding it was clear that what had been written before a case in hawaii and the

being transformative and there was no secret the supreme court ruling in may of 1993 was important because the first time it had recognized as a fundamental with same-sex couples. it was pretty clear when the defense of marriage act came before congress in 1996 and signed into law by bill clinton that was a response to what happened and what could still happen in hawaii the big hole in the stuff never made sense how the case in hawaii started, we knew there were three couples who went into the honolulu office of hawaii department of health on december 17, 1990 and request mere licenses and then to the state on their behalf and they end up prevailing at the supreme court years later with a hole in the stories why did these couples request the marriage license there was not a lawyer in the beginning there was no legal strategy they did have an organization supporting them. what i ended up uncovering was an inconvenient truth for civil

rights groups which is nobody had a plan, this was the work of a guy named bill woods they gay rights activist in honolulu in the 70s and 80s and he was something of a gaslight he was good at getting attention and creating things and not good at working with others, he was a lawyer and he gets into a petty rivalry in a fight planning committee and decides to upstage arrival planning committee and have put on a wedding and basically misreads the state statute that assumes these couples might be able to have the relationships organized by the state and gets into another petty fight with aclu and bring these couples and at a pr stunt thinking the battle stop the aclu from blowing him off and this is not the story we tell about successful civil rights litigation, that's where the book starts and that the biggest surprise for me and it takes a few years for the infrastructure

of our political debate organizes around this issue but it wasn't being driven by interest groups are activist with any real idea what they were getting into. >> this is one of my favorite undiscovered characters in this narrative because as you said there is a lot of political operatives who look back and wanted to be a neat successful case study they wanted to be a template to make public opinion move 30 points in a decade and when your battle but it's clear that the narrative is way too messy and contingent for that to be the case in as much as i think a lot of the professional activist would like to say it was when we got together and dissolve the plant but you have disruptors like woods or fred carver whose tactics are disavowed by a lot of people in the movement that are extremely

affected particularly in defunding opposition or even when ted olson cannibals he is not on the same page strategically in fact you have the movement feuding out at odds to the very last court case is also not the case that the unity of the strategy, do you draw any lessons or have activist in this reading book not drawn any lessons from the way that this came about that can be applied more broadly. >> i think people want to make it a tidier, neater less messy history than it was but that doesn't mean that there aren't significant lessons that can be taken away and i think other groups are trying their certain

ways in which gay marriage is a different type of issue than other things one important thing a group freedoms mary which from 2001 is a relaunch and in 2009 it has one specific goal which is what they call a marriage equality and made very clear once that is reached through whatever political process they're gonna go out of business. most political issues, interest groups are not built around a particular goal there built around a coalition or number l a of issues and concern and they tend not to want to go away and that means that they make all sorts of strategic and tactical decisions that don't necessarily

form advanced, and issue goal but exist to keep the organization going, keep the donors happy keep relationships of thinking is for other issues one of the things is internal conflict within the gay and lesbian community the human rights campaign which is emerging the 1980s to become moderately successful in building relationships on capitol hill and the white house mostly with democrats but also moderate republicans and they did not want to go one with gay marriage which they did not think was and jeopardize the gains in other policy areas and possibly ruin relationships as they worked hard to develop i think that was very logical from the perspective of hrc and did not make them well loved among activists thought that they were to insider he, compromising, not willing to fight, is sort of made sense that their goals included relationship recognition but in the mid-'90s they were fighting to get the justice department to

keep separate records about hate crimes that included gays and lesbians that was somewhere you can get republicans to vote in the senate but you couldn't get them to vote, they made about trade-off it was reasonable and they said they had one goal and we don't have to make trade or strategic decisions about where we go and what we do but it's only going to be the goal of marriage for not number l a. that is really unusual and it went into a lot of business after the supreme court role because they had gotten the results and that allowed us to focus on this issue and do important research to change the way that the political work on the issues being done. >> to think there was a downside to that as well? >> there's a lot of people in the lgbtq world who had to miss

opportunities of marriage, marriage came by design of some people, big donors in particular and by actions of history and the fact that it culturally for aliens to dominate the lgbtq issue in the last couple of years. and as things that have not moved forward of the political or legal matter for part of the lgbtq community and to be obvious we now see our transgender people that are functionally no better off as a result of the marriage advocacy than they were before for a lot of folks like bisexual they were

able to marry the people that they loved even when same-sex marriage was illegal where they live. but this was not an issue of all parts of the coalition and actually went to the supreme court in 2015 and it looked very likely if not certain that a majority would come together to strike down and that they ban on same-sex marriage and not rule that same-sex couples nationwide can vary, there is a question about anthony bringing the majority of the opinion how big of an opinion is it going to be, at that point people are almost taken for granted that they were gonna win and then what is winning big look like, what it would've looked like an opinion conceivably treated this as a major civil rights case that determination against sexual minorities should be treated under civil rights equivalent to discrimination on the basis of race and and religion. anthony kennedy, that would've

been a major breakthrough for not just transgender but for gays and lesbians who live in states where there unknown discrimination laws for example. but he had a very narrow decision about marriage and treated not as a civil rights case nearly as a gay rights case in a marriage case how special marriage is america and you should this glued and disrespect children that they have by denying them access to the institution, that was a result

of successful messaging from gay rights activist about how and why gay people wanted to be part of the institution of marriage, not about anti-gay discrimination in the central problem, there's a lot of people who look back and think this is obviously a big victory for gay rights but it could have been leveraged into a more sweeping victory for the lgbtq community. >> is amazing as you point out before any of the controversy hit nationally they gay rights movement was fighting for the nondiscrimination act and all these years later, they still are although as you point out both decisions which had some surprising conservative support is very conservative part, to some degree, what is the next frontier for gay rights in lgbt rights in general. >> you see a few things that have happened even before the decision in 2015 there are a lot of religious conservatives would been fighting against gay marriage who acknowledged the law that into things that came out of that, one is a real fighting on transgender issues

that we seek but much of that is moved into where public opinion remained on their side you talk about the 30-point shift and same. entrance issues are similar to where things were before part of it is going to a position of strength the other thing we see this push forward to religious liberty demanding more from the exemption and one way to look at that visit concession that unlike robie waited for 50 years later conservatives will have a real hope of overturning it through the courts there is nobody talking about overturning, i don't know anybody that thinks there's a possibility that a case would get at the central holding and you can restrict marriage to opposite couples. what conservatives want to do is

basically carveout exemption that could have the purpose of limiting what civil marriage means in our society by telling institutions or employers that they can treat. couples differently if that's in line with the religious values, there is a case that ended up not being decided on the marriage in your home state of colorado who did not want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple there was a lot of cases about wedding photographers and stuff like that in the case of the supreme court will likely decide later that the catholic social service agency that depth of quantum place foster children with same-sex families. i imagine if the court starts acknowledging. exemptions maybe in a few years were looking at a case where private employer says that they will get health insurance coverage to the opposite marriage partners to their employees but not the same partners of their employees and that interferes with the religious views of their owners

or shareholders or whatever. i think we could end up in a place that were not questioning other gay people to get. but whether society on a whole is obliged to treat their marriages interchangeably with those of a straight couple. >> as you're talking about in the book it almost had to be dragged into putting this on the play of the culture war, there were a few rank-and-file conservative social conservative activist who had to go out there and convince people that this was important almost as if their hearts were never really in it, i think for myself at the time is seemed like a central issue

in the culture war but as you think no one is still obsessed with this and that they have moved on. do you think that this was real as a manufactured outrage for large segments of the right. >> the fear was sincere, a lot of it is not a real thing that people have to contend with until massachusetts starts marrying same-sex couples in 2004, i think people had a sincere sense that this is a central institution not just in society at large but almost everybody's individually lives and that 6000-year-old institution could be if there is a dramatic change or understanding that that could have societal implications i think that was true and it was a fear of the new is a fundamental tendon of the conservative mind of a dramatic social change and this is a dramatic social change when changes in may of 2041 thing couples stop marrying

before that point opponents can make apocalyptic statements about what, literally this is going to be the civilization, what wrong compared to 9/11, after they start mirroring, even the biggest crisis of same-sex marriage have trouble coming up with examples of what is actually changed and he was been harmed by this. i think that that ends up being a big problem for keeping together coalition of people who are opposed to it, very few people have a stake, a personal stake for economic stake in resisting marriage one to 30 happening, what is happened over the decade between the

massachusetts in 2004 when this comes to the supreme court, the coalition of people who are personally invested in same-sex marriage matches gays and lesbians who want to get married or already married but their families and communities and their employers of what type of benefit packages they should have they don't have some expectation of whose could be covered under various things unions can negotiate contracts and what they're asking for on behalf of spouses and things like that, that coalition is growing in people who actually invested in this the coalition of people were opposed to untrained shrinks because nobody is bothered by the fact that gay couples are married, that explains not that the shift in public opinion but the intensity and by the end nobody cares about fighting about this and i

think there's a lot of issues in our politics where there might be a dramatic one for some of the resistance is new and unimaginable and the resistance comes from a sense of fear about the change would entail and is either by the bad for not that bad for people every oriented the reality of the world that were living in. >> same-sex marriage ended up being surprisingly popular with gay people as well, as you mentioned the early debate is it not radical enough for is it a betrayal of what we stand for to buy into this traditional conservative institution of marriage and you still see echoes of that debate and you hear people in the nostalgic where there was more inherently countercultural to be part of the gay rights movement, it

strikes me as a parallel first to the political debates and other arenas where you have this activist, you have activist staking out an extreme position in the rank-and-file silent majority who actually do want to get married and behave like conservatives in the community. with a white picket fence and so on and so forth. was that a development that people anticipated. >> to separate your actually right is it desirable to seek acceptance often a feminist coming from lesbian lawyers who had gone to college and law school in the era of second wave feminism and based on institution that it been created and protection rated and they

said as you put it well we created a sexual counterculture in its own values why should it be our goal to fight for inclusion or whatever. i think there is ideological opposition, that goes away when conservatives decide they're going to fight this. there is nothing that can organize a union in a movement like your opponents deciding to go after you and that was a small strategic error by religious conservatives that they too can issue on which the gay rights fragmented and made it something that they were reunited. i think you're right that there is material value of marriage and individual lives which is detached from the symbolic value and there's been a push among the lesbian lawyers in the 80s that argued the goal of lgbt family law should be upwards of multiple families. that the objective should be to create a legal regime for a wide

spectrum of arrangements, household arrangements were equally accepted under the law, that can be partnerships between people of different sexual combinations also multimember households, single parents, adoption, communal living, the whole rain in the idea of the rights and benefits of how they set up their household. that goes away even like civil unions and partnerships that have disappeared from our conversation gays and lesbians have done more in the last generation to reaffirm marriage as a central legal gold standard and the only arrangement within our society expected to give a certain range of not right to

benefits but the rights and benefits are really important, i expect there is also a way in which it gets treated as culturally as seems like extreme ambition of the white picket fence in the minivan and whatever. but really well-to-do people, or i should say relatively well-to-do people hire lawyers to fill out contracts that can basically find their way to the rights and benefits of marriage, super wealthy people cared a lot about marriage and you can't

contract your way out an estate tax exemption but working class, gays and lesbians in non-san francisco or new york in places where throughout the country really saw the value of marriage because if you want to get on your spouse's union pension there's only one way that that's going to happen if you want to get dental coverage there's only one way that that is going to happen and people recognize that in some of the leadership in the gay and lesbian movement was taken back by how popular this was among rank-and-file. >> as you allude to you met and married your opposite spouse on the time you're working on this book you feel like researching the subject that you things about marriage. >> i thought little about marriage had a generalized ambition to be married my parents were married i been around marriage but i never thought about what it was in

deciding what it represented him legal briefs and judicial opinions but there was beat up a bit of writing in margaret marshall's opinion in massachusetts where she said marriage is the most momentum active of self-definition and a human being's life and when i decided to marry my wife amy, that was her bouncing around my head and i would've never thought about marriage in those terms and i also very much as a freelance writer i benefit from the material benefits that come along with her employer's health insurance. one of the things that happen when you have a legal effort but a political effort is what

marriage was in life, some of that was civil unions and in 2000 civil unions emerged in vermont as a compromise that same-sex couples benefit the sense of legislature you don't have to give the marriage. after that point gradually gay rights activist had a wide marriages special and it resonated with a street person and one reason the court decisions in the opinions the massachusetts, kennedy now being read at weddings by gay and straight couples because a public language about what this institution means now. >> i been more than one straight wedding in addition to gay weddings where various court decisions have been read which is an interesting phenomenon i'm going to open up for questions

and after my next question or two if you're out there please start to get about what you want to ask. the other thing that you mentioned which is an innovation and a necessity by freedom marriage was a combined political and legal strategy i to track effort to move public opinion and when political campaign not as a means of accomplishing wholesale and the changes that they wanted but to put pressure on the court and the court would feel comfortable making this decision can you talk about that and how that came about. >> i read about a strategy meeting held in the spring of 2005 by nine lawyers and strategist for all the major groups and gay rights work they had a few major donors behind them that plan how they're gonna

do this naturally, 2004 is a terrible year, got majority in the house of congress in 13 states passed statewide ballot amendments to ban marriage and there's a real reckoning basically, ever gonna continue to fight for marriage is seems like it's costing us at the moment more than were gaining and what's actually happening they come up with a 20 or strategy to win at the supreme court the idea is to get there by 2025. they use the math of loving virginia which is supreme court one in 1967 struck down the state ban on interracial marriages so look at what they thought the landscape would have to be in the state for judges to feel like they were getting out of ahead of american society. broadly what they wanted to do aside from the legal merits the

court does not want to be in a position where it is seen as imposing something that is not already accepted by the american people and has not shown some success in the political sphere the court does not want to be seen as imposing that were very aware and i don't think anybody thinks it was wrongly decided as a result there acutely aware of the fact that 60 years later in 70 years later we still don't know how to integrate schools in part because there was a lot of resistance to the segregation order. they come up with a set of goals and basically they need to have marriage, legal and a handful of states, they will have civil

unions or domestic policy, if they want to show eventually public opinion and pulling in 50% nationally and demonstrate that they are not getting in the court orders but there winning the legislatures and when this is put through statewide, by the time the first marriage came up in 2013 which is earlier than they initially anticipated, they got some of each of those and required a political focus there trying to move nine people in washington but they spent a lot of money advertising so when justice kennedy reads the paper and sees public opinion polling he sees 52% of people in the country support this now i feel like a weight lifted that i'm not going to go. i think this is a movement that

started with lawyers and increasingly and ended with judges and in between interesting interaction between the legal strategy in the political strategy there is this being a damaging myth among democrats that gay marriage ballot initiatives in 2004 or even they were the prime movers and putting those on the ballot to drive evangelical turnout, did you get to the bottom of that, what degree do you think that affected the presidential election outcome in 2004. >> two separate questions there is reason the political scientist to study this who rather persuasively cast doubt on the evidence that this affected the presidential

election results a lot is focused on what exit poll finding in ohio that people in african-americans, there is reason to be skeptical and this is a project where social scientist more than me but there is a reason to be skeptical in the day after the election diane feinstein says same-sex marriages and 17 years later people who study this are moving far away from that. on the bigger question or the question of a better point of entry, was is a native strategy to have the stuff on the ballot into aid bush which became the right and the left i think people on the right were happy that karl rove did the tricky

stuff all over the country and people on the left bought into it naturally, the reality i write about as a religious conservative evangelical who spend all of 2003 in the beginning of 2004 trying to get the bush to care about marriage and they totally failed, their whole view of the bush white house that they're being taken for granted and they played a central role in winning 2000 he got distracted by 9/11 and the activists are saying about joe biden needs taken out for granted because he wants to win moderate suburbanite in a 2003, seeming how they can get bush and road to care as much about marriage as they do the federal

marriage amendment, the effort to amend the u.s. constitution and it's only after gavin newsom unilaterally to married couples in san francisco which bush called lawlessness and that's why he reluctantly had to sign the constitutional amendment to stop the lawlessness it's only been that bush supports and it's only after the marriage amendment failed to get a super majority in the senate that summer that the national organizations that supported the federal amendment turn their attention to the state amendment. it's easy to look at the evidence and become skeptical and you look at the 13 states that have ballot measures and only a couple of them were battleground which nobody was fighting over ohio and michigan and most were not states that bush cared about about winning

and one of the states he cared about in missouri in august and the summertime and design but i reconstructed the dynamic of the activists on the white house and they never felt like the white house was really receptive to them and what it was like doing their bidding because they had shares of common interest in this issue. >> i do love the argument and that's why we have to make it illegal, i'm going to turn over to mark, he's going to take your questions and relay them. >> thank you, what a great conversation and so timely in the sense that we say here in pride month in the state of florida, by the way it still has on the book the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and i mentioned that in a moment because i want to share with you a question that i came

in i want to go back to molly's original question which was in the book you obviously finished it and 2015, what are the last six years been like in was there a desire to do an epilogue in terms of that or that is another opportunity. >> the new stuff to tony 15 which my purposes was good that there is a clarity about the main part of the story, i accepted i would spend a lot more time and the lack of backlash and how it's feared from our politics, i really thought and had been scheming with my editors about a deadline with the expectation that i would be spending 2015, 16 and who knows how long to try to chase the embers as it was thought out around the country and i mention kim davis with the kentucky county clerk a little

while in the summer 2015 went to jail out of her refusal to basically issue marriage license for gay couples i was expecting the supreme court decision that there would be hundreds around the country and the state attorney general and they would have the backing of the state supreme court, it would not surprise me at barack obama justice was the u.s. marshals into the county courthouse, i really expected and a lot of that is having read roe v. wade about board and landmarks of a right decision of real organized backlash, the other study looking back in june 2015 into major events, june 26, 2015 is a supreme court rules, june 15,

2016 as a donald trump decided he's running for president, he came down the escalator. if you told me in advance that the most gifted demagogue of our era with a remarkable instinct of how to hit americans against each other on various identity lines and own amusement or political benefit or whatever would announce he's running for president and to dominate our political conversation in the same month there was a landmark liberal court ruling that struck down basically red states bands on something that people thought was a religious issue, i would assume those to be greatly related to one another and somebody like donald trump would find a way to make this a central part linked identity, one of the curious things about donald trump is look back at

that campaign, muslims, women, immigrants of a variety of countries, mexicans, he never really wanted to make an issue out of this. his administration has not particular friendly, he never wanted to make it a target. . . . >> is a very different world in terms of what the fallout would be prorated so i thought we would be covering a lot more of that. in 2018, the last three years have been, it is a very long book. everything editing and copying and fact checking takes longer.

and then it was delayed for a year because of covid-19. it was put back three times. so this was the last pride month. yes. >> will gaze are really good at waiting so is perfectly fine. we are thrilled of the year with us here tonight. and you talk about sort of where public sentiment is today and i think that approaching something like 70 percent of folks who have been pulled, just feel like it is not an issue. a lot of straight printed say to me, we love gaze and are getting married they could be miserable just like us. and i think it is a little tongue-in-cheek. but at the end of the day, you talk about in terms of the gold standard and you write in one of your chapters about the governor portman and i'm a kid that grew up in ohio so keep an eye on what goes on there.

but who had been before he was in the senate and the house of representatives and he had, and he had been a sponsor of the bill. in a life changing moment. and i have seen this with other leaders where a child comes out, their child comes out. we start with their own representatives here in coral gables whose daughter is trans. and now her son, roderigo, and so i do think those moments hit really close to home but even around this issue of gay marriage were there any of those aha moments that you can see that thread being woven. >> yes one of the things that have always been the predictor of individual support on gay rights issues. his how people answer the survey questions. you have a friend, family member or coworker who is gay or

lesbian. and that was first asked the late 1970s. this pretty close to zero. now it's pretty close to 100 percent who say yes now predict some huge part of this story is i have to presume based on everything we know about heredity that the percentage of people in the population are gay or lesbian is the same but obviously different because they're far more people who are out. and in the sort of desire with previous movements for racial inequality your justice, women's disc quality. unlike race or or people control the conditions under which they acknowledge and disclose and announce their gay or lesbian. in support of what we have lived through is a cycle that is really hard to disentangle these

elements but it is pretty clear how culture played several. ahead have sort of lived experiences in lived experiences and also same-sex families pretty did people get out. and their immediate community and their families. their parents. they realize that you somebody was gay or lesbian in the realize the desire to be married was actually pretty basic and not that radical rated probably the least radical thing you could want in your life. and that created the cultural climate which other people felt okay to come out. then became a virtuous cycle. i think corbin wrote nicely about this, on the day that he announced his decision, the first national republican of any currently involved in politics

and announce for same-sex marriage. a lot of what he said can we try to frame it in a conservative way. why should his son be denied something he and his wife had access to. not sort of some provocation anyone make changes with this sort of integration term that exalted traditional marriage. [inaudible]. is very hard for people to be arguing with 50 percent of their energy that marriage is a special institution that brought stability and meaning to people's lives and the other 50 percent of their energy we should deny some people access to this institution. i these very hard rhetorically for conservatives to shape what they were saying about wife marriage is important.

>> i love the use the terms that it was a tribute to marriage versus being something that was a natural. i love that word i realize it was his word but i want to show that think for a lot of people, it goes to the core of what you're writing about in the sense of a great history. it was a particular interview you did that was very emotional or painful or someone recounting for you, particular export is because even though talk about this time can we obviously have to go back further than that to really understand sort of the psyche of our country if you will the feelings of the time. i grew up in the late 60s and through the 70s and the closet was nailed shut, it was glued shut and then you know the handle was removed.

this pretty frightening and there was no pathway to marriage, be when i called the hernia burke situation, long roommate situation. >> i was painful but i spent a lot of time with a couple from hawaii that also written a little about, a character and she and her partner one of the three couples and it part of his pr firm that ends up going to a landmark decision in the hawaii supreme court. and why she was a time when in this couple and i talked plenty of the years about the relationship pretty she was in her closet when she started this process. she is not out of work. they were not legal protections

for employment demonstration, she would've been in a much open place. did not want her employees to know she considered herself gay. his a lot of interviews, i wanted to start this book before you were with political strategists and lawyers to report i see the country stumbling into this big complex and overwhelming, the show us sort of getting pulled into a political or legal conflict that she did not anticipate, plan for, ask for. and it was a, there were a lot of conversations. in her thinking at the time from she said she relies when she was five years old she recognized

there's something different about her. it was a moment you see where three months before their involvement, she buys a ring and proposes to her. it doesn't mean anything. in a legal sense. to reconstruct that conversation from both of their ends. what did you think you are asking her in this moment. what did you expect. clearly really painful moment for each of you to share. but it did not have the obvious like legal meeting but it does when two people who can legally marriage under varied. those interviews were no emotionally like attacked people about their lives. i been relatively little talking about people's romantic lives.

there are few things up with me and my comfort zone and talking to judges about the complexities of procedure and talking to people about their feelings with the other. >> i like that in mali you have written about the same couple. any thoughts in that. molly: yes. i was just thinking back to that i got to know them for a few pieces back in 2015 that i didn't they accompany see the competition so i took them out to dinner. and who should be at the next table, and it is halfway through, valerie jared and kathleen rated at the time the secretary and so i just sort of could not resist. as we were leaving the restaurant, i stop by the table

and said i don't know if you know who these two women are violent this point they had already become celebrities particular with gay-rights and litigation circles. it was so funny everybody knew there was sort of an issue. this lonely torch caring for someone nearly two women who started this improbable bout to help back in the '90s. in 2015, she the most powerful people in the american government are gushing over them. oh my gosh, we admire you so much party to such an honor to meet you. it was such a funny illustration of how full circle the issue had come and entered into the mainstream. >> so think you for sharing. and sasha going back to research, the book is incredibly annotated. which i think anybody wants to dig deeper than you did, it is right there for them.

as one of the things that i marvel out because this is a journey for you and in the process that you finish writing and then a delay. what are you working on now. sasha: historical election that i sort of stumbled into being fascinated with from a little over hundred years ago in indiana that i am hoping it's a very good historic and interesting residences of our current moment. i promise everybody my life that it will be shorter than this book. [laughter] reihan: i love that have you ever been to indiana. sasha: i have. there's some ohio biases. >> listen we want to punch above our weight and everything to get a little bit annoyed with michigan and indiana we took about because they never know what time it is hard because there is a high now. for some areas do not do

daylight semis so this could be the 12 block radius and it could be three different hours. it could be tomorrow for all you know. sasha: so i'm hoping this the next thing you predict. >> and i love this parallel to what is obviously been the daily conversation here. you can't turn on a media outlet and were still talking about whatever is left over than hung over from that. molly a final word of god. i want to be competent at this is 8:00 o'clock hour pretty. molly: i think ohio is a period indiana for the record. [laughter] not just because of the time issue. [laughter] massage alarms usually with us with parting thoughts. sasha: thank you guys for this conversation i really enjoyed it. what i wanted to do, this is something that unless you have like a lot of nine -year-old was

to tenant these chats, everybody is lived through some significant part of the story. and i think that i can sort of promise everybody that there will be large parts of it that are entirely new to you than will find things that you remember and you will see them from a new perspective and get an understanding what happened that led to those events. i want to follow was that will be new to you. so sort of hope that it is an experience. it's incredibly eye-opening and certainly familiar with things that are you or you probably have from your memories but don't know the full story. >> know and i appreciate that in one of the things that i can tell you is that the book has done for me is that i went back as part of my preparation today to look at sort of help that

constitutional amendment came about. and i completely forgot the mean. [inaudible]. 2008, 62 percent of floridians voted to make that a constitutional amendment. while at the same time, cast a vote for the first african-american president in history of our country. so florida has always been a little bit wonkey in terms of even as political sort of leanings. sasha: i'm here in california. in november in 2008, by smaller margin, that barack obama was winning overwhelmingly. and i think there a lot of moments in the story where some version of we have come a long ways in short period of time. it will strike people. >> know and i think out of the supreme court's decision, other things in florida have been

discussed targeted it is just recently that we have put protections and terms of employment here that state level. i will get a chamber of commerce though we are all about our company's workforce and at the end of the day we are not being competitive at his estate because foster like what whatever relocate there. even going back to our member the president of wells fargo given florida from california. and at the time her marriage to a woman was recognized, before this in california and she said she fought to the nail have to come to florida to work because wells fargo is taking over for while cobia and she said because i moved to a place where my marriage is only recognize, is vilified. and that is nothing sober you up in a quick moment of the senior leading executive who said relocated you look to florida and that way how's the rest of

the country in the world like that was just one of the 50 states but now since that obviously, now florida the third largest state in a trillion dollar economy needs folks who come here because not only has this protection but wants to be in florida and can be part of our workforce. so we see it from our perspective in a lot of ways that's just being a gay man. with somebody who appreciates what work you have done is i can find it now in one place. sasha: thank you. >> ladies and gentlemen gentlemen and honor and don't forget you can pick up sasha look at books and book. and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your home coming to percent little green button right below, sasha emily and myself and you can support locally, intermittently owned businesses like books and books. a great community collaborator. this is a great example today of to get of having discussions around around central issues.

but only during pride month but throughout that great year. make it a great night pretty to be safe and continue to support local businesses. ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ >> a look now at some publishing industry news. here christian or is writing a memoir in the trump administration which is scheduled to be published in 2022. who currently on title will be published by on-site books. and according to the publisher

the definitive solar recounting of the administration and the truth about what happened behind closed doors. the justice department has ended is investigation into whether former national security advisor john bolton disclose classified information it in his book about the trump administration. the doj is also dropped a lawsuit that attended to secure profits for the bucket into the memoir, the more it happened was released last year. in other news, stated doctor martin luther king jr the exclusive publisher late civil rights leaders literary archives and collins published his first book strikeforce freedom in 1958. and also in the news, and politically conservative publisher is been charted all season press printed by kate carson and elyse burke both publishing veterans are needed and at the start of their adventure saying that the company is open to welcoming those authors were being

attacked, bullied and banned from social media and in some cases, outright rejected by politically correct publishers. all season press will be releasing books to president trump in medicine and president trump former trade advisor peter, and finally author and new yorker staff writer jenna malcolm has died at the age of 86. she was the author of several books including 1989, the journalist and the murderer. hope tv will continue to bring in new programs and publishing news and you can also watch all of our past programs anytime apple tv .org. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ >> in these pages and 43 quarters of immigrants and i can't come to know, company by their stories. i've people who came to pursue opportunities that didn't exist in their native countries. while a recognized