Edmund White Quotes
Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked.
Earlier, he had opposed same sex marriage, but as the population as a whole had a change of mind on this issue, so did he. By 2013, 16 States had modified their laws to allow gay marriage.
Two days earlier, New York Voted to legalize gay marriage and Alesi became the first Republican to vote for gay marriage. New York was the first state to legalize gay marriage by an act of their legislature and not by the judiciary on Constitutional grounds. Generally, most of the Republican politicians were opposed to marriage equality as they had the religious right wing of the party for whom gay marriage was anathema.
He actually proposed withholding benefits from American citizens on the grounds that they would not, in his judgment, go to Heaven. The Constitution allows no differentiation on government benefits based on likely heavenly inadmission. The vast majority of Evangelical fundamentalist Christians to not take such a position. If Klingenschmitt were not a Congressional candidate, few would pay attention to his extreme positions.
The novel The Married Man (2000) is gay-themed and draws on White's life. Fanny: A Fiction (2003) is a historical novel about novelist Frances Trollope and social reformer Frances Wright in early 19th-century America. White's 2006 play Terre Haute (produced in New York City in 2009) portrays discussions that take place when a prisoner, based on terrorist bomber Timothy McVeigh, is visited by a writer based on Gore Vidal. (In real life McVeigh and Vidal corresponded but did not meet.)
