8 The Play
Written by Dustin Lance Black
Presented by Broadway Impact
and Busted Space Theatre Company
Characters in 8 the Play
The Plaintiffs
Kris Perry and Sandy Stier have been together since 1997 and are the parents of four boys, including Spencer and Elliott who appear in “8.” They met when Kris enrolled in a computer class that Sandy was teaching. In 2000, they made the leap and decided to move in together. The couple talks fondly about how much time they spend together in the kitchen preparing meals for their ravenous brood of little athletes.
Perry is executive director of the First Five Years Fund, a national organization that helps America achieve better results in education, health and economic productivity. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a M.S.W. from San Francisco State University. Stier is the director of information systems for the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency. Originally from Iowa, she holds a B.B.A. from the University of Iowa and an M.P.A. from Golden Gate University. Perry and Stier first tried to marry in 2004, after San Francisco began issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.
Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo have been together since 1998. Katami is a fitness expert and small business owner who graduated from Santa Clara University before receiving his graduate degree from University of California, Los Angeles. Zarrillo is the general manager of a theater exhibition company. A native of New Jersey, Zarrillo graduated from Montclair State University. Before they took the step to move in together, Paul, who was already out to his family, wanted Jeff to come out to his parents. “I at that point was not ready to move into another step of our relationship until he had really been open to his family…I didn’t want to hide anything,” says Paul in one interview. Jeff finally came out to his family and found them more supportive that he’d expected.
Having wanted to marry each other since 2008, they considered options including traveling to other states for a civil union, but felt any alternative fell short of marriage. They live in Burbank, California. At the time of the trial they had not yet had children, but were looking forward to taking that step towards a family in the future—but only if they could first ensure that they would be a secure, married couple. On June 28, 2013, Paul and Jeff were married at Los Angeles City Hall by Mayor Antonio Villariagosa.
Ted Olson then served as an assistant attorney general in the Reagan Administration from 1981 to 1984, before returning to private practice as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of his former law firm. He was legal counsel to U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the investigation of the Iran-contra affair. He also represented Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted of selling government secrets to Israel, in his failed bid for a reduction of his life sentence.
Democrats allege that Ted Olson was also part of the Arkansas Project, which aimed to damage and end the presidency of Bill Clinton during the 1990s. Olson assisted Paula Jones's legal team in her sexual harassment suit against Clinton.
Olson later successfully represented presidential candidate George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore, which effectively determined the final result of the contested 2000 presidential election. Olson served as U.S. solicitor general under Bush from 2001 to 2004.
In 2005, Olson was twice considered a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court—first to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's post and again following the withdrawal of Harriet Miers.
David Boies has been the chairman of Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP, a law firm with offices in New York, Washington DC, California, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and London. Prior to 1997 Mr Boies was a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.Mr Boies has been selected as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine (2010).
Mr Boies served as chief counsel and staff director of the United States Senate antitrust subcommittee in 1978 and chief counsel and staff director of the United States Senate judiciary committee in 1979.
In 1991-1993, Mr Boies was counsel to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recovering $1.2 billion from companies who sold junk bonds to failed savings and loan associations.
In 1998-2000, he served as special trial counsel for the United States Department of Justice in its antitrust suit against Microsoft. Mr Boies also served as the lead counsel for former vice-president Al Gore in connection with litigation relating to the 2000 election Florida vote count. As co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Perry v Brown, he won judgments establishing the constitutional right to marry for gay and lesbian citizens in California.
The Defense
Judge Vaughn Walker was a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Walker served as a law clerk for federal judge Robert Kelleher in the United States District Court for the Central District of California from 1971 to 1972 before spending the rest of his pre-judicial legal career as a private practice attorney in California from 1972 to 1990.
On the recommendation of U.S. Senator Pete Wilson, Walker was nominated by President George H.W. Bush on September 7, 1989 to a seat vacated by Spencer Williams. Walker was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on November 21, 1989 on unanimous consent and received commission on November 27, 1989. Walker has served as the chief judge of the court since 2004.He served as Chief Judge of the court from 2004 to 2010. Walker stepped down from the court on February 28, 2011.
Here’s a shocker: Judge Vaughn Walker, the man who presided over the Proposition 8 case, is himself a gay man! Although he was not particularly closeted during the trial, his orientation did not seem to pose an issue for opponents of marriage equality—as a fairly conservative judge, most thought that he would not allow his own personal stake in the case to interfere in his ruling. One article calls Judge Walker’s orientation “the best kept open secret” of the case.
Charles J. Cooper is a founding member and chairman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC. Named by The National Law Journal as one of the 10 best civil litigators in Washington, he has over 35 years of legal experience in government and private practice, with several appearances before the United States Supreme Court and scores of other successful cases on both the trial and appellate levels.
In 1985 President Reagan appointed Mr. Cooper to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Cooper reentered private practice in 1988, as a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of McGuire Woods. From 1990 until the founding of Cooper & Kirk in 1996, he was a partner at Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge where he headed the firm’s Constitutional and Government Litigation Group.
Mr. Cooper’s practice is national in scope and is concentrated in the areas of constitutional, commercial, and civil rights litigation. He is currently representing private clients in a variety of commercial cases, including antitrust, intellectual property, and contract disputes. Mr. Cooper also represents a number of state and local government bodies, as well as private clients, in a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory cases.
Another irony from the defendant side of the courtroom is that defense attorney Charles Cooper discovered that his stepdaughter was a lesbian during the trial. Despite what he was arguing in court, Cooper has described his views on marriage equality as “evolving” since the trial ended. By the time of this interview in 2014, Cooper was helping his stepdaughter Ashley plan her wedding to a woman named Casey. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/us/28marriage.html?pagewanted=all
The Witnesses
Dr. Nancy F. Cott
One of the most common arguments against marriage equality is the idea that marriage’s primary purpose is to encourage and support the birth and raising of children. Dr. Nancy Cott, a Harvard history professor whose research focuses on family, gender and marriage, was a key witness in undermining this argument. Her testimony focused on the economic aspect of marriage—the benefits that are reaped when a couple are recognized by the state and country as married. Far from being solely about children, Cott argued that marriage is also an economic maneuver—and one which gay couples need access to as much as straight couples.
Gregory Herek
Psychologist Gregory Herek’s testimony focused on the psychological research about LGBT people. He argued that there is no evidence supporting the idea that homosexuality is a choice, and that so-called conversion therapy is not considered effective or safe by the vast majority of psychological organizations: “It certainly is the case that there have been many people who, most likely because of societal stigma, wanted very much to change their sexual orientation and were not able to do so.”
Click here to watch a clip or read more excerpts from Herek’s testimony.
http://www.afer.org/blog/witness-testimony-gregory-herek/
Gary Segura
Dr. Gary Segura is a political scientist and professor who spent nine hours in the trial testifying about the political vulnerability that is felt by minority groups with lesser rights. He outlined the degree to which the LGBT community is underrepresented in government, and how that had already cost them dearly at the voting booth, losing polls and ballot initiatives all over the country because they have less political sway with few representatives to fight for their rights. He argued, “Three-fifths of the states have constitutionally established a group of people as not fully equal.”
Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson is the founder of gay marriage organization Freedom to Marry, and was best known during the trials for engaging in a debate with NOM president Maggie Gallagher. While Gallagher argued that legalizing gay marriage would fundamentally alter the definition of marriage, Wolfson disagreed, arguing, “When women began practicing law, there was no…change in what a lawyer was. When they were allowed to vote, there was not a change in the definition of voters.”
Maggie Gallagher
Maggie Gallagher is no longer associated with NOM, the National Organization for Marriage, but she is just as outspoken about her opposition to gay marriage as she was during the trial. When she learned that defense attorney Charles Cooper was planning his lesbian daughter’s wedding, she called it a “family crisis.” She has continued to voice her opinion that marriage is, first and foremost, about procreation and the raising of children, and that this precludes a homosexual relationship from ever being worthy of a marriage.
Click here to read an article from 2013 about Gallagher’s feelings a few years after the fireworks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/21/maggie-gallagher-pope_n_3963205.html
Dr. William Tam
Dr. Hak-Shing William Tam was originally called as a witness for the defense. He had already written a good deal of material about the perceived dangers of marriage equality, including the legalization of polygamy and a world where children would grow up without any expectation of what gender they might choose to marry. But partway through the trail he withdrew himself as a witness, claiming that he feared for his family’s safety and he hadn’t realized what a time commitment testifying would be.
Click here to read more about Dr. Tam’s questionable testimony.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/proposition-8-backer-haks_n_432215.html
David Blankenhorn
David Blankenhorn’s views on homosexuality are as complicated now as they were during the California trial. In a 2012 op-ed essay in the New York Times, Blankenhorn wrote both that he opposes gay marriage and that he believes in “equal dignity” for homosexual couples—that straight and gay relationships are fundamentally different, but that gay couples do not deserve to be stigmatized.
Click here to read more of this essay.
Ryan Kendall
Ryan Kendall was just thirteen years old when his parents discovered evidence that their son was gay. In one interview, Kendall described, “Overnight, my parents ceased to be the loving, supportive people they had been, and instead became extremely emotionally, verbally, and at times, physically, abusive.” Kendall was put through traumatic and ineffective “conversion therapy” to try and scare him straight. It has take his whole life to pick up the pieces, and in the Prop 8 trial he testified how terribly damaging the experience was for him.
Click here to read a truly heartbreaking open letter written by Kendall about marriage equality and the future of the civil rights movement.
Ilan Meyer
Dr. Ilan Meyer was an associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University at the time of the California case. Much of his work focuses on the stress to mental health that is caused by being a member of a minority group, so he was an ideal candidate to testify for the plaintiffs. He argued in court that suffering legal discrimination and social stigmatization could lead to health risks “in the form of psychological distress, mental health problems, suicide, and lowered well-being.”
Click here to read more about his testimony.
Other Characters
The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) was the sponsor of the court case to challenge Proposition 8. They knew they had to bring together a strong legal team with so many opposed to marriage equality in California. AFER enlisted the help of Ted Olson and David Boies to represent the plaintiffs. This was a melding of two different worlds as Ted Olson was from the Republican Party and David Boies was from the Democratic Party. The two lawyers actually were on two opposing sides in the Bush v. Gore case. Olson successfully represented George W. Bush, and Boies represented Al Gore. They were not the only plaintiff attorneys, but Dustin Lance Black likely chose to consolidate characters in the interest of time and cast size. Although the two have gone on record as still opposing each other from a political standpoint, they made history as a team that helped take marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court.
AFER wanted to show that these two lawyers could come together to support marriage equality. Boies was quoted as saying that marriage equality was something bipartisan—a civil rights issue that went beyond Republican versus Democrat. To this day, Ted Olson is one of the biggest supporters of marriage equality among conservatives. He stated that his work on gay marriage “is the legal accomplishment that I think will always mean the most to me.”
Click here to read an interview about the unlikely partnership.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/us/28marriage.html?pagewanted=all
SPENCER and ELLIOT: Spencer Perry has become more than just a tangential player in the drama of the Proposition 8 case. An 8th grader when the California case was decided, Spencer has been heavily involved in Human Rights Campaign and other civil right groups to try and further the cause of marriage equality and an end to homophobia. Now a college student, he has continued to dedicate as much time as possible to the cause. Elliot has gotten less press attention, but he is equally invested in his parents’ fight to have the validity of their relationship recognized.
Click here to read an interview with Spencer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-maffett/spencer-perry-prop-8_b_3413243.html
And click here to read a letter that Elliot and Spencer wrote in 2014 to thank their moms for everything they’ve done for them.
http://www.afer.org/blog/our-heroes-a-letter-from-spencer-elliott-perry/