【英语生活】同性婚姻斗士沃夫森 Evan Wolfson, architect of the gay marriage equality movement

When Evan Wolfson bought his Greenwich Village apartment in 1996, he had barely enough time to move in before catching a plane to Hawaii to serve as co-counsel on Baehr v Miike. That case is now considered a watershed in the marriage equality movement, of which the charismatic lawyer is considered the prime architect. It was the first time a court ruled that excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage was discrimination. It was also the catalyst in bringing about the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 — Wolfson’s campaign, Freedom to Marry, played an instrumental role.

In the past two years, he’s helped win 65 state and federal court rulings. The Supreme Court is set to rule imminently on whether same-sex marriages deserve federal protection. In the past two years, he has also completely renovated his apartment, which he now shares with his husband, Cheng He, 40, who uses his PhD in molecular biology to consult for pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. When they met online in 2002, there was an “instant connection”, says Wolfson, and they’ve been together ever since, marrying in 2011 when New York joined a growing number of states to legalise same-sex marriage.

After the couple gave up on a long-running fantasy to buy the studio next to their one-bedroom flat, they decided to renovate instead. “I wanted to make it his too, not just mine,” Wolfson explains. They found an extra room hiding in the “dead space of the entry hall and walk-in closet”, he says. “I thought if we pulled the kitchen forward and out, we’d be able to carve something into that dead space. It worked out better than we thought; it really feels like a little room instead of just an alcove,” Wolfson says excitedly of the newly created media room that is accessed by a large sliding door off the entry hall. Guests sleep on an elegant futon he found online, above which hangs a poster from the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Cabaret, the classic Kander and Ebb musical that shows the chilling consequences of inaction.

“I remember going to see it in summer camp for the first time when I was probably 10 or 11 and was absolutely captivated by it,” Wolfson says. That it is a musical combined with history and “some real message” was a revelatory experience for Wolfson, who was told at an early age that he should be a lawyer. “I was very verbal, liked to argue, and I always wanted to accomplish something,” he recalls of his childhood in Pittsburgh. He is sitting on a brown leather couch in his living room. Above him hangs his impressive collection of hand-carved wooden masks, which span many countries and represent decades of travel. They are hung more or less chronologically, from left to right, beginning with ones he bought while serving in the peace corps in west Africa after graduating from Harvard Law School.

“I used to buy a mask every time I travelled, partly because that was one of the great art objects I was able to find when I was in my twenties in Africa. I also liked the idea because it connects to gay history,” he says, referencing the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay liberation groups in the US. “They wore masks because the idea was that gay people wear masks. We pass as something we’re not because we’re being persecuted.”

Wolfson realised that who you are is influenced not only by the choices society gives you but also by the language at your disposal. In 1983, he began exploring this in his law school thesis, which advocated for marriage equality. At the time, he reasoned that “by claiming the vocabulary of marriage we would be seizing an engine of transformation that would help non-gay people better understand who gay people were”.

Living in a village in rural Africa while in the peace corps, he noticed something about the men he was sleeping with: “If they lived in a different society, they would probably be gay. Because they lived in a society where that wasn’t allowed, and they didn’t even have a language for it, they were probably going to grow up, marry women and live somewhat unfulfilled lives.”

One of the many books that line the discreetly built-in bookshelves throughout the apartment is John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, which Wolfson read in college and credits with changing his life. “It was this groundbreaking book that traced the first 3,000 years of western civilisation from biblical times to the Renaissance. Boswell showed homosexuality had not always been scorned. It showed me that if it had once been different, it could be different again.”

Wolfson has the kind of profound optimism that can make seismic change possible. When he argued the Hawaii case, public support for gay marriage in the US was at 27 per cent. Nearly two decades later it stands at 63 per cent, apparently riding a wave of inevitability that once seemed impossible.

“Gay people have been fighting for the freedom to marry for 40 years. This has been a long time building and coming, and the product of millions of conversations and many gay people telling our stories, talking about our love, living our lives and showing people why they needed to change their minds,” Wolfson explains. He does not begrudge anyone his or her previously held beliefs and likes to quote Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin’s reasoning, “I’m in a delegation that formerly included Abraham Lincoln, and when he was pushed once on how he had changed his mind said, ‘I’d rather be right some of the time than wrong all of the time.’”

During the renovation, Wolfson toyed with dispensing with a kitchen but decided on a smaller open-plan one that flows seamlessly into the sitting room and features a large island made from a slab of paonazzo marble. Another slab stretches the length of the room, elegantly sitting on top of two low bookshelves beneath south-facing windows. The room looks out over Sixth Avenue with the Freedom Tower in the distance.

Leftover marble was used to transform the top of a small wood table near the entrance and two nightstand tables and a long desk in the bedroom. Wolfson worries it is too much marble, and it might be, but for the white oak floors that are stained deep brown, giving a farmhouse-chic contrast to the marble’s elegant modernism. A warmth radiates throughout the place.

A log split in two and painted with images from the 16th-century Incan conquest holds particular importance for the couple, who agonised about buying it at a market in Peru, unsure if they would be allowed to bring it on the plane home. “It stands not only as a beautiful object that’s reminiscent of a great trip and has this historical feel to it, but it’s also a reminder of ‘just do it,’ you know?”

Photographs: Brian Shumway

埃文?沃夫森(Evan Wolfson)1996年买下纽约格林尼治村(Greenwich Village)的公寓房后，还没等搬入就匆匆搭机前往夏威夷，担任Baehr v Miike同性婚姻案件的协理律师。该案件如今被视作婚姻平权运动的分水岭，而他这位魅力十足的律师则被誉为平权运动的“总设计师”。这是美国法院首次做出排斥同性恋者的婚姻为歧视的裁决。该案进而导致歧视同性恋者的《婚姻保护法》（Defense of Marriage Act，将婚姻定义为“一男一女的结合”）出台。美国最高法院则于2013年判定《婚姻保护法》违宪————而沃夫森发起的非政府组织“婚姻自由”组织在其中扮演了重要角色。

在过去两年中，沃夫森共帮助打赢了65桩联邦与州涉及同性恋的官司。社会迫切需要最高法院就同性婚姻是否应得到联邦法律保护做出裁决。过去两年里，他还把自己的公寓房装修一新，如今则与自己的同性丈夫、40岁的何成(Cheng He)居住于此。分子生物学博士何成是制药厂与保健公司的顾问。他俩2002年通过网络结识后，可谓“一见钟情”，沃夫森说。从那之后，俩人一直形影不离，并于2011年在纽约登记结婚，因为同年纽约州与越来越多的州一样，实现了同性婚姻合法化。

两人决定结束长时间的拍拖，转而买下了紧临他们同居的一卧公寓旁的工作室，并决定把它彻底装修一番。“我希望把它打造成我们两人共同的爱巢。”沃夫森解释道。他俩发现“门厅与步入式衣帽间的死角区”可以打造出一个房间。他说：“我认为如果把厨房区跳出去，就能把该死角区隔出来。最后效果比原先设想得还要好，感觉真成了一小间房，而不是壁橱。”沃夫森说起新打造出的多媒体房（借助门厅的大推拉门进出其间）时，激动之情溢于言表。造访的客人就睡在他从网上淘来的沙发床上，上方墙上挂的是Roundabout Theatre Company剧团推出的音乐剧《Cabaret》的宣传海报，《Cabaret》是坎德尔与艾布(Kander and Ebb)组合创作的经典音乐剧，讲述了因主人公优柔寡断而导致严重后果的故事。

“我记得自己大约10、11岁时，在夏令营第一次观看这部音乐剧，就彻底为此折服。”沃夫森说。这部与历史事实及“某些真知灼见”相结合的音乐剧对于沃夫森来说可谓醍醐灌顶：他很小的时候，就有人说他将来适合当律师。“我从小就能言善辩，一直希望有所成就。”他如此回忆自己在美国匹兹堡市(Pittsburgh)度过的童年时光。接受我的采访时，他就坐在客厅的棕色皮质长沙发上，头顶则挂着他收藏的各种手工雕刻的木头面具。这些面具来自很多国家，是他几十年闯荡世界的见证。它们从左至右、按时间先后顺序挂在墙上，最早的几个面具是他从哈佛大学法学院(Harvard Law School)毕业后、远赴西非担任和平队志愿者后购置的。

“我过去每次出去游历，都会买上个面具，部分原因是自己20来岁在非洲时，那是本人所能淘到的精美艺术品。我也很赞同马塔辛社团(Mattachine Society)的理念，因为它与同性恋的历史紧密关联。”他说。他所说的马塔辛社团是美国首批争取同性恋平等权利的组织。“社团成员均戴着面具，因为当时想出来的主意就是这样做。我们同性恋者不以真面目示人，因为我们当时正遭受迫害。”

沃夫森认为个人的身份不仅取决于社会赋予的机会，而且取决于自己掌握话语权。1983年，他在自己的法学博士论文中开始探讨此问题，论文的主旨是支持婚姻平等权。当时，他就推理得出：“公然宣扬婚姻平权的词汇，将能抓住彻底改变社会观念的契机，帮助非同性恋者更好理解同性恋者的真实情况。”。

作为和平队志愿者居住在西非的乡村时，他就注意到了自己“同床共枕者”的一些异常情况：“这些人要是生活在西方社会，就很可能成为同志。但由于他们生活的社会并不允许，甚至在语言上也是个禁区，他们可能就这样（以非同志的身份）长大成人、娶妻生子，但终生郁郁寡欢。”

沃夫森的整套房子都精心打造了嵌入式书架，上面摆满了书，其中之一就是约翰?博斯韦尔的《基督教、社会宽容与同性恋》(John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality)，沃夫森上大学时就拜读过它，认为是它改变了自己的人生。“正是这本划时代的巨著，追溯了西方文明从圣经（远古）时代到文艺复兴时代最初3000年的历史。博斯韦尔在书中阐述了同性恋并非一直不受社会待见。该书表明：只要史上有过一次不同，就能有第二次。”

沃夫森具有能使金石为开的乐观豁达。他为夏威夷Baehr v Miike一案辩护时，美国民众对同性恋的支持率只有27%；近二十年后，民众支持率高达63%，曾经天方夜谭的事，如今俨然已成不可逆转之势。

“同性恋者争取婚姻自由权的斗争已有40年。今天梦想成真，经过了漫漫征程，是成百上千万次坦诚对话的结果，也是很多同志不断讲述自己的爱情故事、酸甜苦辣的生活，以活生生的例子向美国民众解释为何他们必须改变成见的结果。”沃夫森解释道。他并不忌恨任何人之前的成见，相反喜欢引用参议院少数党议院督导迪克?德宾(Dick Durbin)的说理：“我所在的参议院，林肯也曾经是其中的一员，当林肯有次被问及为何改变观念时这样回答道：‘我宁可一时对，而不愿一世错。’”

在装修房子期间，沃夫森临时起意不设厨房，转而决定打造成小型的开放式空间，实现与客厅的无缝对接，并用一大块意大利paonazzo大理石雕刻一座大岛置于其中。另一块大理石则横贯整个房间，巧妙地搭在向阳窗下的两排矮书架上。从房间可以眺望第六大街(Sixth Avenue)的胜景、饱览远处自由塔(Freedom Tower)的丰姿。

大理石的边角料则废物利用，做成了门口小木桌的台面、床头柜面以及浴室长条桌的桌面。沃夫森担心大理石使用太多，要不是整成深棕色的白橡木地板的映衬，别致的农家风格与大理石的现代典雅会形成鲜明对照。整个居室处处洋溢着温馨。

在一根锯成两半的圆木截面上，绘着16世纪西班牙征服古印加帝国的画面，这件工艺品对他们两口子有着特殊意义，在秘鲁某个市场买下后，他俩十分纠结，因为不知飞机能否允许托运。“这件漂亮艺术品不仅是见证我俩重要旅程的信物、极富历史沧桑感，而且还时刻提醒我们要‘只管去做’，意思你懂得的，对吧？”

照片由布赖恩?沙姆韦(Brian Shumway )提供。

译者/常和