MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Nine years ago, on a hot June day, a decision at the U.S. Supreme Court changed everything for same-sex couples in the U.S. In a 5-4 split decision in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, the justices ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry. As part of our Summer of Love series, we wanted to look at how that decision came about but also why, our next guest says, legalizing same-sex marriage has been and is good for straight people and for the country as well. His name is Jonathan Rauch. He is a writer and a journalist who was a leading advocate for same-sex marriage, and he's with us now. Jonathan Rauch, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
JONATHAN RAUCH: Thank you.
MARTIN: You published a book titled "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good For Gays, Good For Straights, And Good For America" back in 2004, long before the Obergefell decision. Can you take us back to why you first thought that legalizing same-sex marriage might even be possible?
RAUCH: Well, I first spotted the issue in 1994, when it looked like the state of Hawaii might legalize same-sex marriage in that state, setting off a national uproar. And I just immediately recognized this as a transformative idea, one that could remove gay love from the underworld and give it a destination in people's communities, weave gay couples into families and their families into communities and strengthen the American family as well because we need more marriages, not fewer.
MARTIN: People forget that gay relationships were criminalized. In much of the country, people could be fired from their jobs. They could be arrested and were. People could be...
RAUCH: ...Arrested, entrapped, they'd get misdemeanor citations. They'd be released, but then the next day their names would run in the paper. They'd be out of a job. They'd sometimes have to move completely out of the state and start their lives over. The Supreme Court didn't put a stop to that until 2003. So in 1994, when same-sex marriage came along, the rest of the world thought, well, we're asking to turn a felony into a marriage license.
MARTIN: You were telling me that there were actually two kind of campaigns of persuasion - one among gay people themselves and the other among straight people. Why would people in same-sex relationships need to be persuaded that legalizing marriage was not just a good thing to do, but should be a priority?
RAUCH: Well, we have to remember that gay culture - gay and lesbian culture, as we then called it - grew up completely outside of any institutional boundaries, grew up outside of marriage, and became kind of a liberation movement. A lot of people - a lot of good people thought, we don't need marriage. In fact, we're trying to overturn the old patriarchic family structures like marriage. And then you also had the major gay rights groups at that point. They thought this campaign was a loser. They wanted to focus on workplace discrimination, which looked like they could actually get it. And what needed to happen and did happen was a grassroots groundswell of ordinary gay people saying, no, we really, really need this. We cannot live in a world where we are not related to each other as kin but are caring for each other for life.
MARTIN: What do you think changed that attitude?
RAUCH: It was really the aftermath of the AIDS crisis. I came out as gay - I was 25 in 1985 and came out into this terrifying world where if someone didn't show up at the gym, a man, for two weeks, you could - equal odds - is that person on vacation or dead? You know, someone would get taken to the hospital, and their partner would be locked out of the room by the relatives who would fly in from, you know, the other coast and take over. And that, I think, really drove the recognition of the importance of family and of the structures of family.
MARTIN: What about the argument that this is not just good for the LGBTQ community, but this is also good for America writ large? What is the argument?
RAUCH: Well, the argument is that America needs more strong marriages, not fewer, that the worst thing you can do for marriage actually is have an entire class of citizens being poster children for having, you know, successful normal lives as partners outside of marriage. And that, in fact, what you have here is a whole group of Americans who are trying to shore up and join in this institution. At a time when - can we be frank? - straight people were abandoning it. You're seeing divorce rates that were skyrocketing. They've leveled off since then. You were seeing out-of-wedlock parenting skyrocketing. So this was actually an opportunity to shore up marriage as a norm and to kind of potentially, over time, make it cool again. And I think to some extent, that's happened.
MARTIN: According to Gallup pool, when the Obergefell decision came down, only 58% of people surveyed agreed with it. But in May of this year, that number had risen to about 7 in 10 of those surveyed said same sex marriage should be legally recognized. What do you think accounts for that?
RAUCH: Well, of course, there's the fact that a lot of gay people are married now, and people have seen that the sky won't fall, the divorce rates won't increase. The big argument against gay marriage, which never made a lot of sense but got a lot of traction, was if gay people start marrying, then straight people might stop marrying. People saw that didn't happen. So I think a lot of it is just goodhearted Americans seeing the example of what was happening around them.
MARTIN: That is the activist and author Jonathan Rauch. Jonathan, thank you so much for speaking with us.
RAUCH: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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