Forcing the Spring: Inside the fight for marriage equality
Election Night 2008… California’s controversial ballot initiative Proposition 8—which removed the right of gay men and women to marry—passed alongside Barack Obama’s stunning victory. In an exclusive account of the national struggle for marriage equality, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jo Becker carries readers from the first efforts to stop Prop 8 and the campaign to undermine the Defense of Marriage Act all the way to the final suspenseful moments in the Supreme Court. Following the lawyers, the political operatives, and the couples at the center of this historic lawsuit, Becker weaves together the many threads of the campaign.
She tells the story in Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality. It’s being described as a definitive, insider’s account of the struggle for marriage equality. But some gay rights activists are calling it a distortion of history.
Jo joins KPCC reporter Frank Stoltze at our Crawford Family Forum to talk about it. With them are Torie Osborn and Terry Stewart. Torie is a longtime gay rights activist in Los Angeles - truly one of the deans of the movement here. She was instrumental in helping train newly politicized gays and lesbians to become activists in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008. Terry is lead attorney for San Francisco in the California state and federal court marriage equality cases.
Don’t miss this ringside account of a major civil rights struggle that has challenged our society’s ideas of marriage and family and changed the landscape in which men and women in many states can now choose their spouses without legal restriction. 
Moderator:
Frank Stoltze, reporter on KPCC’s politics and governance desk
Guests:
Jo Becker, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality
Torie Osborn, former Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 
the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, and the Liberty Hill Foundation; a Deputy Mayor to former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Therese M. Stewart, Chief Deputy Attorney, City and County of San Francisco
*Due to a professional conflict Jesse Tyler Ferguson will no longer be able to participate in this event.
6:30pm - Doors Open
7:00pm - Program
Admission is FREE, but RSVPs are required.
#ForcingtheSpring
#MarriageEquality
KPCC asks: Are you in a same-sex marriage or considering one?
Forcing the Spring will be available for purchase in the lobby courtesy of Skylight Books and Jo will be signing after the program.
(Frank Stoltze, Jo Becker/Piotr Redlinski, Torie Osborn/Getty Images-Kristian Dowling, Terry Stewart/Getty Images, Forcing the Spring published by Penguin Press HC)