Berkeley Voices

Berkeley Voices


33: How a tender message helped win the fight for same-sex marriage

June 25, 2018

When Thalia Zepatos joined the Freedom to Marry campaign in 2010, she had a big job ahead of her: she had to craft a totally new message about same-sex marriage that would convince Americans that supporting the issue was the right thing to do.

"It was looking for that statement that a lot of people could nod their heads to," said Zepatos. "It wasn’t about who was participating in the marriage, it was about what it really stands for. And we were trying to elevate that conversation."

Five years later on June 26, 2015, same-sex marriage was made legal in the U.S.

Martin Meeker, the director of the Bancroft Library's Oral History Center at UC Berkeley, interviewed Zepatos and nearly a dozen others about the Freedom to Marry campaign for the center's Freedom to Marry Oral History Project. Listen to Meeker talk about how a single message can help change a nation's opinion.

Read the story on Berkeley News: https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/06/26/podcast-freedom-to-marry/
Freedom to Marry photo