1. Evan Wolfson was born on February 4,1957 and is an American attorney and gay rights advocate.
17 Facts About Evan Wolfson
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Evan Wolfson is the founder of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States, serving as president until its 2015 victory and subsequent wind-down.
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Evan Wolfson was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.
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Evan Wolfson has taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, Rutgers Law School, and Whittier Law School and argued before the Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v Dale.
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Evan Wolfson now teaches law and social change at Georgetown Law School and at Yale University; serves as a senior counsel at Dentons, the world's largest law firm; and primarily provides advice and assistance to other organizations and causes, in the United States and globally, that are seeking to adapt the lessons on "how to win" from the same-sex marriage movement.
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Evan Wolfson was born in to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Pittsburgh.
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Evan Wolfson graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1974 and Yale College in 1978.
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Evan Wolfson returned and entered Harvard Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1983.
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Evan Wolfson wrote his 1983 Harvard Law thesis on same-sex marriage, long before the question gained national prominence.
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Evan Wolfson directed their Marriage Project and coordinated the National Freedom to Marry Coalition, a forerunner to Freedom to Marry.
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Evan Wolfson called the unions a "wonderful step forward", but not enough.
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The outcome of many discussions was a concept paper, drafted chiefly by the ACLU's Matt Coles together with Evan Wolfson, "Winning Marriage: What We Need to Do".
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Victories and losses followed over the next few years, with Evan Wolfson advising and weighing in on nearly all of the efforts to secure marriage for same-sex couples, serving as a national expert on and consistently optimistic champion of same-sex marriage.
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Evan Wolfson urged President Barack Obama to publicly support same-sex marriage, which he did in 2012.
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In 2016, Evan Wolfson was named Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law Center and Distinguished Practitioner in Grand Strategy at Yale, teaching law and social change, and he serves as senior counsel at Dentons.
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Evan Wolfson has given speeches at places such as Judson Memorial Church.
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In 2025, Evan Wolfson was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the highest civilian honors in the United States, by President Joe Biden, alongside 19 others, including Mary Bonauto, who played key leadership roles in winning marriage equality for same-sex couples.