With gay couples only weeks away from legally marrying in the U.S. for the first time, it's easy to forget that only a decade ago, even domestic partnerships--which were, legally speaking, a joke--inflamed conservatives whenever they were suggested. Everyone, straight and gay, knew gay marriage itself was impossible.
Not Evan Wolfson. He first wrote about marriage for same-sex couples in 1983, in a Harvard Law School paper. After graduation, he spent 10 years pressing the marriage issue. Fellow gay activists shushed him. "For years," says Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "many of us were...