The Struggle for Marriage Equality:
What I’ve Learned on the Front Lines
Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick
Sunday, August 2
2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Home of Danny Gibson and Bill Weinberger
829 Keniston Avenue
Los Angeles
Sponsored by the Jordan/Rustin Coalition, Equality California Institute,
and the Liberty Hill Foundation
Optional contributions to the Jordan/Rustin Coalition encouraged
Dear Friend,
Please join us for a very special gathering Sunday August 2nd.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick will join us for reflections and discussion on the struggle for marriage equality for same-sex couples. From his first day in office, Governor Patrick put his personal reputation and political capital on the line to protect marriage equality. His leadership allowed Massachusetts to avert a referendum fight similar to the Proposition 8 battle.
As only the second African-American governor elected since Reconstruction, and as the Clinton Administration’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Governor Patrick will offer his unique perspective on the subject.
Please RSVP to Milton Davis: Milton@eqca.org
Governor Deval Patrick—Biography
Hoping for the best and working for it, as his grandmother used to counsel him, Deval Patrick’s life has traced a trajectory from the South Side of Chicago to the U.S. Justice Department, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and now the Massachusetts State House, where he was elected Governor in 2006, one of only two African-Americans elected governor since Reconstruction.
Having grown up in poverty on the South Side of Chicago, Patrick was selected to attend boarding school at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and then went on to Harvard, the first in his family to attend college. After spending a post-graduate year working on a United Nations youth training project in the Darfur region of Sudan, Patrick returned to Harvard where he earned his J.D. in the fall of 1979.
Following law school, Patrick served as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge before joining the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and later the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow. In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation's top civil rights post, where he worked on a wide range of issues, including prosecution of hate crimes and abortion clinic violence, and enforcement of employment discrimination, fair lending and disabilities rights laws. During his tenure, Patrick led the largest federal criminal investigation before September 11th, coordinating state, local and federal agencies to investigate church burnings throughout the South in the mid-1990s.
In 2001, Patrick joined The Coca-Cola Company as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. He was elected to the additional role of Corporate Secretary in 2002, and served as part of the company's senior leadership team as a member of the Executive Committee.
As governor, Deval Patrick has done more to advance equality for LGBT people than any other chief executive in the country. Immediately after his election, Governor Patrick expended tremendous political capital to persuade legislators to vote down a ballot initiative to undo marriage equality. Without his unwavering leadership, Massachusetts would have faced a referendum fight similar to the Proposition 8 battle.
In addition to marriage equality, Governor Patrick has been a pioneer on health care reform, ensuring Massachusetts’ lowest-in-the-nation rate of uninsured people. He also has championed clean energy laws; passed and implemented an historic Life Science Initiative; and extended the buffer zone to protect the safety of women seeking reproductive health services. Among the cadre of governors, Governor Patrick is one of President Barack Obama’s most trusted advisors and closest confidantes.
Diane and Deval Patrick have been married for over twenty-five years and have two adult daughters, Sarah and Katherine. In June of 2008, with her father by her side, Katherine—then 18—came out of the closet publicly. The next weekend, Deval, Diane and Katherine marched together in Boston Pride.
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