The Freedom to Marry

I felt like I was standing there beside the freedom to marry activists, meeting, organizing, marching, crying, cheering. A very personal, insider reveal about making positive change. Wonderfully sad and happy moments and a blueprint for bringing people around to see what equality means to the disenfranchised.

You might be tired of the LGBT hoopla over the last few years, but you might be curious about the history of the movement that led to outlawing the banning of gay marriages just last year, thanks to The Supreme Court. The Freedom to Marry is a first-rate doc about the activities leading up to that monumental decision.

Evan Wolfson occupies the prime spot in this comprehensive and accessible recounting of the struggle between liberal and conservative believers about gay marriage. The doc takes an almost neutral stance, letting supporters of the gay movement and the defense of traditional marriage duke it out. Because most of the shots are of supporters, the testimony of the opposition takes a starring role too, so necessary in any doc or debate on such an incendiary topic.

Director Eddie Rosenstein takes a moderate approach as he concentrates on the drama leading up to the SCOTUS decision rather than beating us up with the liberal agenda. As charismatic as Wolfson is, Mary Bonauto, who argues the case in front of the Court, is cool and efficient, and of course successful. One of the finest sequences shows her listening to the recorded trial and stopping the recording to comment on her testimony. Although she does not brag about her part in any way, her sheer competence comes out regardless.

If you're a history buff, you will enjoy the accurate arc of success several years out. If you are a liberal who gets off on great movements like this, you will not be disappointed. If you are a cinephile, you will delight in the doc craftsmanship integrating talking heads with historical footage for a complete film siding with the tide of humanitarian sympathy for freedom of expression characteristic of the U.S.A.

The Freedom to Marry (2016) is a documentary directed by Eddie Rosenstein. Now, the right of people to have a same-sex marriage is simply part of our culture. It's hard to remember that this right came only after a very recent Supreme Court ruling (June 2015).

In the years to come, young people will assume that African-Americans could always ride in the front of the bus, and that race or religion would not bar anyone from becoming President. However, these rights that we take for granted were all won by people who kept pushing for them over many years.

This movie shows us the struggle for same-sex marriage that went on for years before the Supreme Court ruling. Two major players were activist Evan Wolfson and attorney Mary Bonauto.

The movie brings us face-to-face with both Wolfson and Bonauto, as well as with many people who were key supporters, although their roles were somewhat less prominent.

There's no recreated footage in this film. We see interviews with many people, especially Wolfson and Bonauto and we see important meetings, conferences, and strategy sessions, which were filmed on the spot, and then used in the movie.

I think it's important for any interested person--straight or in the LGBTQ community--to see this film and learn from it. What started as a (literally) impossible dream, ended in a historical victory. However, this victory didn't come from hoping and wishing. It came from hard, strategic efforts on the part of many, many people.

We saw this movie at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. Any movie works better on the large screen, but this one will work almost as well on the small screen. Find it and see it!

Greetings again from the darkness. The film takes us back more than forty years to a 1973 poll that found the majority of the people in the United States felt homosexuality was immoral. That's what the folks at the non-profit organization Freedom To Marry had to overcome in their decades long fight to win the right for legal gay marriage. Filmmaker Eddie Rosenstein offers up a behind the scenes, and very detailed look at the history, strategy, and tactics used by the group to reach their goals.

In 1983 Evan Wolfson wrote his Harvard thesis on why gay marriage is moral and just. After that, and because of it, Mr. Wolfson became the driving force, the leader, and the face of the movement for gay marriage rights … as well as the Director of the Freedom To Marry organization. This is really the inside story and a chronological legal and political history of the push for gay marriage.

The fight is truly a Civil Rights movement of rallies and marches – both for and against. We witness the revolution one conversation at a time, and the film counts down the days to the Supreme Court arguments, as well as the final decision. 102 days until the Supreme Court arguments open … and a reminder that about a decade prior there were zero firms that allowed gay marriage. Much time is spent with Mary Benauto, the chief litigator for the cause, and a true champion of legal gay rights.

It's Evan Wolfson who dominates the film, and rightly so. He's known as "The Marriage Guy" and "The Paul Revere of Gay Marriage". We witness him leading many important meetings and consistently working towards the goal. He explains to us that AIDS shattered the silence of the community, as the movement shifted from "leave us alone" to "let us in". As Ms. Benauto explains, "I do this work because people just want to be who they are"; but it's Evan who makes his mission clear when he states, "I always believed we would win". The film is an extraordinary look at a vital part of Civil Rights history, complete with heroes.

As a college student I found this movie fantastically interesting and inspiring. Becoming an adult in a world as struggling as this one can seem overwhelming and scary. The Freedom to Marry is a film that makes change seem possible. It shows how each action that seems like just a drop in the bucket does make a difference and can when people come together and fight for something as ubiquitously precious as love, they can't be held back. The film is a triumph for love, empowering change, and understanding humanity that makes me, a college student, driven to improve this country and the world. In other words - can't recommend it enough.