Panelists Sean Eldridge, Rev. Joseph Palacios and Suzanne Goldberg analyzed the campaign for legalization of same-sex marriage.
Eldridge is the political director of the same-sex marriage interest group Freedom to Marry and Palacios is the foundation director of Catholics for Equality, a group that focuses on obtaining Catholic support for same-sex marriage.
Goldberg, a clinical professor of law at Columbia, directs Columbia University’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law.
Eldridge focused on Freedom to Marry’s plan to make same-sex marriage legal in more states.
At the beginning of 2009, Connecticut and Massachusetts were the only states that had legalized gay marriage, Eldridge noted. During that year, gay marriage became legal in New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa and Washington, D.C.
“[This approval] provided tremendous momentum to us now, and it continues to provide momentum,” Eldridge said.
Affirming their progress was the release of CNN and Associated Press data in 2010 that, for the first time, showed in a national poll that the majority of Americans reported supporting the legalization of gay marriage.
“We saw tremendous victories in the court,” Eldridge said. “Which brings us to today, the beginning of 2011, where there is a lot more work to be done.”
Eldridge also outlined Freedom to Marry’s “roadmap to victory,” which involves winning votes in more states, increasing support for same-sex marriage and ending federal marriage discrimination.
Among the group’s goals are a judicial or legislative repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. In the upcoming months, Eldridge explained, the group hopes to get same-sex marriage legalized in Maryland, Rhode Island and New York.
“We have supportive governors in all of those three states,” he said. “None of those victories are a given, but we feel optimistic.”
Eldridge also noted that the group is hoping for the repeal of Proposition 8 in California. Freedom to Marry also intends to secure the legalization of same-sex marriage in Maine and Oregon.
Palacios explained that his group, Catholics for Equality, targets what he calls “the moveable middle” of American Catholics, in particular Catholic youths.
Catholics are relatively liberal, he explained, with 60 percent of Catholics from the ages of 18 to 29 being in favor of full marriage equality.
In order to promote his campaign, Palacios said, the group aims to present same-sex marriage as a pro-life issue.
“Pro-life means ... the holistic growth of every child,” Palacios said. “Pro-life means pro-gay, being pro-your child, pro-family, pro-the extended family.”
Palacios also said he intends to focus on the suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, HIV prevalence and lack of self-esteem extant among gay youths.
Goldberg, who focused on education, said it was important to teach the public that there is a difference between civil marriage and religious marriage and that most efforts to legalize same-sex marriage would not force religious institutions to recognize them.
While the United States might view itself as liberal on the issue of same-sex marriage, she said, many other countries, such as Argentina and Belgium, have already legalized same-sex marriage.
The discussion was moderated by Hendrik Hartog, the director of the Program in American Studies at the University, and is a part of the Woodrow Wilson School Public Affairs Lecture Series.
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