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Victory for Marriage Equality Holds Special Meaning for Gay Man Born to Interracial Couple

1,193 views · Published 27 June 2013 · 2:07 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: Democracy Now! · 2013 · News & Politics

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Watch the full interview on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/mrro2. Stuart Gaffney and his husband John Lewis were two of the plaintiffs in the California marriage cases that established the freedom to marry before Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage went into effect. For Gaffney, the media director for Marriage Equality USA, the Supreme Court's defeat of Prop 8 and DOMA is of particular significance because the federal government once didn't recognize his parents' interracial marriage. Gaffney's mother is Chinese American, and his father is white. In 1948, the California Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage, but other states did not. Gaffney says opponents who claim acceptance of gay marriage will open the door to polygamy made the same arguments when trying to block marriages like his parents' decades ago: "Just as making my parents' marriage legal in all 50 states didn't lead to polygamy, making our marriage legal only resulted in my mom and dad being able to witness our wedding day, which was, for all of us, one of the happiest days of our lives."

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