Jo Becker - Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality

T his is how a revolution begins.

It begins when someone grows tired of standing idly by, waiting for historys arc to bend toward justice, and instead decides to give it a swift shove. It begins when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the segregated South. And in this story, it begins with a handsome, bespectacled thirty-five-year-old political consultant named Chad Griffin, in a spacious suite at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco on election night 2008.

It was hours before the final votes were counted, but already Chad knew he was about to experience the most bittersweet election of his life. On the suites large television screen he watched as Barack Obama stepped onto the stage in Grant Park, Chicago, and into his place in history as the first African American elected president of the United States.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, the president-elect boomed to the electrified crowd, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Outside the hotel on the street, a crowd chanted the Obama mantra: Yes we can!

Chad wanted to celebrate too. He had been working in Democratic politics since he was nineteen years old. Inspired by then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, he had worked on the governors presidential campaign, then left Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia to follow him to Washington, becoming the youngest staffer in the Clinton White House. He was six feet tall, on the slender side, and with his ubiquitous sports jackets and ties he still looked very much like the Washington staffer he once was.

Obamas election meant more to him than just a repudiation of eight years of Republican control of the White House. It was not just a turning point in the nations fraught racial history, though it was certainly that. It was a signal that, as the president-elect told the Grant Park crowd, change has come to America.

But Chads eyes kept flickering away from the television and back to his computer screen, where early returns from another race suggested change had not come for everybody, and especially not for people like him.

In a campaign known as Proposition 8, California voters had gone to the polls to decide whether to strip gays and lesbians of the ability to marry by amending the states constitution. The referendum had been placed on the ballot after the California Supreme Court found that denying same-sex couples marriage licenses violated their rightsa decision that had briefly allowed same-sex couples to wed in the most populous state in the nation.

Looking on with concern was Chads closest friend and business partner, Kristina Schake. With her wavy red hair, curvaceous figure, and wide, engaging smile, she looked like the kind of girl who might have once graced a 1950s pin-up calendar. But at age thirty-eight, she had political instincts every bit as sharp as Chads. They had been in business together for close to a decade, and their Los Angelesbased communications firm, Griffin Schake, counted everyone from actor Brad Pitt to Californias first lady, Maria Shriver, as clients. They were known for their ability to raise big-time Hollywood money for national Democratic candidates, and for their expertise in running Californias never-ending ballot initiative campaigns.

The two friends believed that the No on Prop 8 campaign had been marred by a failure to reach out to Californias African American, Asian and Latino populations and messaging that, while pleasing to the gay community, did little to move voters on the fence. But despite their expertise, they had not been brought in to help turn the polls around until late in the game. They had cut some last-minute ads that nudged the numbers up, but Kristina could see by the way Chad was tensely raking his hand though his closely cropped brown hair that he didnt think it was going to be enough.

Part of what made Chad such an effective political operative was his tendency to envision and plan for worst-case scenarios that never materialized. It meant he lived in a perpetually stressed-out world. Kristina had a sunnier disposition, and saw it as her role to provide Chad with some balance. But as more precincts came in, she could see that this time he was right to worry.

Kristina thought back to how hard it had been for Chad to come out eight years earlier. She had known he was gay long before he worked up the nerve to tell her, and he had done so only after she gently nudged him one night as they sipped cocktails on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Look around the room, she had asked. Whats your type?

The two were like brother and sister, completing one anothers sentences, there to prop the other up when relationships foundered or other life crises struck. Now she ached for her friend. How could Chad not feel singled out and rejected? Not only had Californians passed Proposition 8 by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, but voters in Florida and Chads home state of Arkansas had also passed antigay initiatives.

It feels, he told Kristina, like a triple gut punch.

That night, we made a pact, Kristina recalled. We were going to look for a way to move this cause forward. And if we found it, we would take it.

Ten days later, Chad and Kristina found themselves sitting in the sun at the Beverly Hills Hotels Polo Lounge, where celebrities, agents, and studio deal makers mingle under trellises laden with pink bougainvillea. Joining them at their outdoor patio table were movie director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. The Reiners were clients of Chad and Kristinas firm, but they were much more than that, almost surrogate parents. They had invited the two young consultants to lunch to rally around Chad and commiserate about the election results.