Is America Ready for Gay Marriage? - William Zabel May 7, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/03/04/William_Zabel_and_the_Fight_for_Human_Rights

Lawyer and human rights advocate William Zabel predicts gay marriage will be granted legal protection in the same way as interracial marriage, but at a much quicker pace. He says if U.S. voters are "ready for an African American president, they can be ready for same sex marriages."

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New School President Bob Kerrey talks with William Zabel about his distinguished legal career, his work as chairman of Human Rights First, and his role in significant human rights cases, including the landmark Supreme Court decision which put an end to race-based bans on marriage.

William Zabel is chairman of Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), a nonprofit international human rights organization. He has traveled the globe on Human Rights First's behalf, including a 1986 trip to Chile, where he investigated cases involving those who were disappeared under the Pinochet regime. Zabel was a strong advocate for the creation of the International Criminal Court, and he helped support its growth as an effective forum for bringing human rights violators to justice. Zabel also played a key role in the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, in which the Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute unconstitutional, effectively putting an end to race-based bans on marriage. Two years later, he was the lead lawyer in Weiss v. Gardner, where the Supreme Court held that a loyalty oath then required by Medicare was unconstitutional. Later, he signed the brief in Palmore v. Sidoti, in which the Supreme Court held that a white woman could not be stripped of custody of her child because she married an African American.