Coverage of Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2005 veto of California’s marriage equality bill
Selected by George Takei
On Thursday, Sept. 29, 2005, my partner Brad and I—we would not be legally married until 2008—sat in the kitchen of our Los Angeles home watching CNN as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fellow actor who had courted gay and lesbian voters, vetoed AB 849, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, the first marriage equality bill ever passed by a U.S. state legislature. I was so enraged by that televised act of political cowardice and hypocrisy that I sat down with Frontiers magazine, used the interview to publicly blast the veto, and—at the age of 68, after a lifetime in the closet—came out as a gay man, knowing full well that such a disclosure could have ended my career as a working actor in an industry that was still deeply wary of out gay performers. That is what feels essentially American about where this country is going: A single cable news broadcast can still move a citizen to risk everything for the truth, and our democracy moves forward only when ordinary people decide they will no longer be silent.
Takei is an actor, activist, and author of, among other books, the graphic memoir It Rhymes With Takei.
