Evan Wolfson

About the author: Evan Wolfson is the senior staff attorney and director of the Marriage Project for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights organization. He also served as cocounsel for the gay-marriage case Baehr v. Lewin (renamed Baehr v. Miike in 1996) in Hawaii.

Prohibiting same-sex marriage deprives gays and lesbians of the fundamental right to marry. It also denies them hundreds of legal, social, economic, and practical benefits that derive from the institution of marriage. Laws denying same-sex couples the right to marry are similar to previous laws that forbade couples of different races to marry. In order to achieve true equality, lesbians and gay men must fight for nothing less than their equal right to enjoy all the benefits that...