Evan Wolfson Yale-Jefferson Award Lunch

2016 Yale-Jefferson Awards Luncheon

Alumni Recipient: Evan Wolfson '78
Founder and President of Freedom to Marry

Evan Wolfson was founder and president of Freedom to Marry, the campaign that won marriage in the United States, and is widely considered the architect of the movement that led to nationwide victory in 2015. In 1983, Wolfson wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on gay people and the freedom to marry. During the 1990's he served as co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case that launched the ongoing global movement for the freedom to marry, and has participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases. Wolfson earned a B.A. in history from Yale College in 1978; served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in Togo, West Africa; and wrote the book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, published by Simon & Schuster in July 2004. Citing his national leadership on marriage and his appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the National Law Journal in 2000 named Wolfson one of "the 100 most influential lawyers in America." Newsweek/The Daily Beast dubbed Wolfson "the godfather of gay marriage" and Time Magazine named him one of "the 100 most influential people in the world." In 2012, Wolfson received the Barnard Medal of Distinction alongside President Barack Obama.