MAUREEN DOWD<\/a><\/p>\nPublished: January 16, 2010<\/p>\n
SAN FRANCISCO<\/p>\n
It has been quite a journey for Ted Olson. He\u2019s gone from being the conservative lawyer who helped crown W. by winning the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, to being a lesbian.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaureen,\u201d he told me in his gravelly voice, \u201cone of the biggest lesbian groups in this country told me I\u2019m already an honorary lesbian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did it make you feel different, I wondered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still like women very much,\u201d he wryly replied, as his biking pal, liberal adversary and now co-counsel David Boies laughed, snacking on a crust of sourdough bread in their temporary office on Mission Street.<\/p>\n
In 2000, Olson and Boies sparred with each other in Washington over which candidate would marry the country. Now they have joined forces here to spar with Prop 8 defenders over who can marry.<\/p>\n
\u201cTed Olson and David Boies, so what are they up to?\u201d Olson laughed, summarizing the confusion and conspiracy theories that their union inspired.<\/p>\n
As the sun set on the Bay Bridge behind him and the curtain dropped on the first week of the dramatic trial to challenge the constitutionality of the state\u2019s ban on same-sex marriage, Olson reviewed the case: \u201cWe\u2019re going to explain why allowing same-sex couples to have that same right that the rest of us have is not going to hurt heterosexual marriages. It has no point at all except some people don\u2019t want to recognize gays and lesbians as normal, as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boies, wearing a flag pin on his lapel, said that the state of California is engaged in \u201cgay bashing.\u201d He spoke intensely about the gay and lesbian plaintiffs, who offered poignant testimony about their loving relationships and about wanting to be liked and accepted: \u201cThese people are people you would want your child to grow up and marry. You can be a child molester and get married. You can be a wife beater and get married. You can be a child-support scofflaw and get married. The importance of that emotional relationship is so vital to the pursuit of happiness that even prison felons, who aren\u2019t really procreating, have a right to get married.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting the rabid effort being made to restrict marriage to only those who can protect its sanctity, a chuckling Olson reeled off some names: \u201cTiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Kobe Bryant, Bill Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked Olson if he misted up, as many in the courtroom did, when Jeff Zarrillo, a 36-year-old manager at AMC Entertainment, testified that he loved his partner \u201cprobably more than I love myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Olson replied, noting that he finds himself getting weepy a lot, including when a bright lawyer in his Washington law firm approached him in the library to tell him she was a lesbian mother of two and she was grateful to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s something the matter with you if you don\u2019t care enough to feel the suffering that they\u2019ve been through and if you\u2019re not emotionally upset about the fact that we\u2019re doing an immense amount of harm to people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not treating them like Americans. We\u2019re not treating them like citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boies said the problem was generational, and they have to try the case before judges their own age who might find it hard to move beyond old prejudices. (Although this judge, a libertarian-tilting George H. W. Bush appointee, Vaughn Walker, who likes to hire magicians for the court\u2019s annual dinner, has been so accommodating to their side that Ed Meese complained he was tilting the case.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a grandson who\u2019s a senior in college, and he can\u2019t imagine fighting over this issue,\u201d Boies said. \u201cIt\u2019s like explaining to my daughter that there was a time when women didn\u2019t have the right to vote and couldn\u2019t own property.\u201d<\/p>\n
The anti-gay-marriage proponents whipped up a moral frenzy in 2008, suggesting conjugal parity would harm children, summon the devil, tear down churches and melt civilization. But Olson argued in his opening statement that the discrimination gays experience \u201cweakens our moral fiber in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Charles Cooper, the lawyer on the anti-gay-marriage side, cited President Obama\u2019s declaration that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, Olson noted that Obama\u2019s parents could not have married in Virginia before he was born.<\/p>\n
I asked the lawyers if they were disappointed that the president who had once raised such hope in the gay community now seemed behind the curve.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamned right,\u201d Boies snapped. \u201cI hope my Democratic president will catch up to my conservative Republican co-counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson added: \u201cI\u2019m not talking about Obama, but that\u2019s what\u2019s so bad about politicians. They say, \u2018I must hasten to follow them, for I am their leader.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn\u2019t realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it\u2019s done, you can\u2019t remember what all the fuss was about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the New York Times: By MAUREEN DOWD Published: January 16, 2010 SAN FRANCISCO It has been quite a journey for Ted Olson. He\u2019s gone from being the conservative lawyer who helped crown W. by winning the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, to being a lesbian. \u201cMaureen,\u201d he told me in his gravelly voice, \u201cone of the biggest lesbian groups in this country told me I\u2019m already an honorary lesbian.\u201d Did it… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-1Dg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6279,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions\/6279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}