Pittsburgh’s Evan Wolfson awarded presidential medal for advancing same-sex marriage rights
“Hope is a key element of successful activism.”

Pittsburgh native Evan Wolfson recently was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal during a ceremony at the White House for his pioneering work in the marriage equality movement.
Wolfson, who grew up in Squirrel Hill and now lives in New York City, was feted by President Joe Biden on Jan. 2 for decades of advocacy that culminated in the 2015 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right.
Wolfson was one of 20 individuals chosen for the medal for having “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens,” the White House said.
Other awardees included attorney/activist Mary Bonauto, who argued the pivotal marriage equality case before the Supreme Court; former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who spoke out against President-elect Donald Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol; and Jewish photographer and international philanthropist Bobby Sager.
Wolfson was lauded by the White House for “helping millions of people in all 50 states win the fundamental right to love, marry and be themselves, and for his singular focus and untiring optimism to change not just the law but society — pioneering a political playbook for change and sharing its lessons, even now, with countless causes worldwide.”
Wolfson’s family, including his husband of 23 years, Cheng He, and his brother, David Wolfson, a pediatrician who lives and works in Squirrel Hill, attended the ceremony. “That was special to me,” Evan Wolfson said. “Their enthusiasm was very touching.”
Wolfson began his trailblazing work in 1983, asserting in his Harvard Law School thesis that marriage is a human right guaranteed by the Constitution to all, including same-sex couples.
The impetus came in large part from his two-year stint with the Peace Corps in West Africa after graduation from Yale College. As an American, he said, he realized that some of the men with whom he was involved — because they lived in a society where being gay was forbidden — lacked the same freedom to fulfill their sexual identity as he would upon returning home.
“They didn’t have the structure, permission or even the language to choose the path I would follow when I got back to the U. S.,” he said.
Wolfson also was inspired by John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality,” a book that he said changed his life.
“I wrapped it in a fake cover and read it while visiting my grandparents in Florida,” he recalled. “It’s about the first thousand years of civilization and how gay people have been treated. There were periods of much more acceptance and of much less acceptance.
“It made me realize that, if things had been different once, they could be different again, and so when I was writing my thesis I wanted to write about what could be made better.”
When he launched his fight, in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was president, the Moral Majority was establishing the religious right and HIV/AIDS had become an epidemic.
The next several decades were a constant battle for marriage equality, “and not just to change the hearts and minds of a larger society,” Wolfson said, “but to persuade people within our own community that it was something worth fighting for and that we could win.”
Wolfson founded Freedom to Marry in 2003. His book “Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry” was published in 2004, the same year that Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Wolfson and his allies built state-level campaigns based on public education and political organizing, creating a climate for legal arguments to win. By 2015, polls indicated that most Americans approved of same-sex unions, and 36 states, the District of Columbia and Guam had established marriage equality by court ruling, statute or voter initiative.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Wolfson said he never doubted that the movement would succeed — “that we can rise and trust others to rise to fairness” — and while he knew that it would take a long time, “time seems shorter when you are young; in law school, 10 years is a long time.”
He remained tenacious, strategic, and optimistic, he said, stressing that “hope is a key element of successful activism.”
Wolfson was born in Brooklyn and moved to Pittsburgh with his family when he was a toddler. He became a bar mitzvah at Tree of Life Congregation and graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1974. His brother lives in the house where he grew up and his sister Alison lives nearby.
“I come to Pittsburgh often,” he said. “Last year I went to my 50th high school reunion and I’ve been reconnecting with friends. They’ve been sending me texts and messages about the award, and started a listserv.”
Wolfson said he knew in high school that he “wanted to make a difference and “accomplish something big…although I didn’t know what path I would take.”
He was secretary-general of the Western Pennsylvania Student United Nations, studied history, read biographies and worked to become a Senate aide, eventually interning for then-Sen. Joe Biden in the mid-1970s.
Although Wolfson was interested in getting into politics, he said. “I knew I was gay and maybe an electoral path wasn’t likely.”
He recognized that there were other ways of effecting change.
“We all have a voice and can make a difference,” he said.
Wolfson travels the world lending his expertise to a diversity of movements.
He is currently co-authoring a book with his best friend, William Treanor, dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, about a formative road trip the pair took through the South decades ago, “when we were each on the cusp of being who we would become,” he said.
The writing began as a mostly humorous look-back and has evolved into a reflection on how what they saw changed the course of their lives.
They were both at a crossroads, with Treanor considering leaving law school, and Wolfson wondering whether to stick with activism, and the trip inspired them to decide, Wolfson said.
“Bill became a leading academic and successful dean at two great law schools. I went on to lead the decades-long campaign that won the freedom to marry.” PJC
Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
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