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ACTIVIST & CORRESPONDENT

EVAN WOLFSON &
ARI SHAPIRO

Evan Wolfson (left) wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on same-sex marriage in 1983, worked on marriage cases for Lambda Legal during the '90s, founded Freedom to Marry in 2003, and has been tirelessly writing and speaking against California's Proposition 8, the measure aimed at rescinding marriage equality. "Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War," he told the Washington Blade. "California is Gettysburg."

Ari Shapiro (right) had not long been with National Public Radio, as an assistant editor on the news show Morning Edition, when he found himself calling businesses at the top of the World Trade Center. It was September 11, 2001, and Mohammed Atta and his cohorts had just flown two planes into the Twin Towers. "I reached a secretary at one of the firms above where the first plane hit," recalls Shapiro. "She apologized and said that she couldn't do an interview because they were being told to evacuate." He never discovered the fate of the woman he spoke to that day, but the experience was a baptism of fire for the young reporter who went on to become the youngest justice correspondent in the venerable broadcaster's history. Now 30, Shapiro scored one of his biggest scoops earlier this year with a story of a staff attorney in the Department of Justice passed over for a promotion because of rumors that she was a lesbian.

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