When the Supreme Court hears the men’s challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage on March 26, there is a good possibility that their names will not even be mentioned.
What the court is interested in, among other things, is whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection contained in the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, requires extending the right of marriage to those who want to wed someone of the same sex.
What Zarrillo and Katami are interested in is getting married.
“He’s the person I want to spend the rest of my life with,” Zarrillo said in a recent interview as the sounds of an action movie rumbled through the walls of his office at the theater. “I want to be able to call him my husband. I want to marry him, just like my parents are married.”
Their lawsuit against Proposition 8, which California voters approved in 2008 to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, is nearly four years old. Both Zarrillo and Katami say they have grown accustomed to talking to strangers about each other, about love, about their desire to get married and raise children.
Still, until now, the men most closely identified with the court challenge were not the Californians but their attorneys, Ted Olson and David Boies.
Competitors in Bush v. Gore, it was their political-odd-couple collaboration to get the issue of same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court that earned a Newsweek cover, bountiful television interviews and front-page headlines in newspapers across the country.
“Just the other day,” Zarrillo said, “I was talking to somebody about our case and he said, ‘Wait. You mean you’re in the Ted Olson case?’ ”
“But really, they do deserve all the credit,” Zarrillo continued with a laugh. “I mean, they’ve done everything to get us here.”
But every lawsuit requires real plaintiffs, people with a tangible interest in the outcome: The men — along with a lesbian couple from the Bay area, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, who also are named in the suit — would like to get married. Proposition 8 says they may not.
“They are a real couple,” said Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group organized to challenge Prop 8. “They live in a house in the suburbs, with kids going by on skateboards and playing catch in the front yard, and they’ve got their two dogs and they go to work. It’s so remarkably normal in a way, and I think that’s what’s so powerful about it.
“How can you deny these two?”
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