The Littlest Lobbyist
How an 8-year-old boy helped pass the same-sex marriage bill
By Laura Nahmias
Josh Zwerin is 8 years old. He is entering the third grade, reading Harry Potter and climbing trees in the gaslit glow outside his Tudor home in suburban Rockville Centre, Long Island. He also has two dads—Jeff Friedman and Andy Zwerin, the gay couple who adopted him the day he was born—the only family he’s ever known.
But in the last six months of the same-sex marriage debate in Albany, as politicians and lobbyists jockeyed for position, Josh turned out to be improbably powerful in a way he seems barely to comprehend.
Josh, a handsome little fellow in a dark suit and tie, could often be seen in the Senate gallery and Capitol hallways in the last few weeks of the session. Long before the rest of the world knew the legislation would even come to a vote, he had private meetings with senators that proved fruitful for the bill’s chances.
Sandwiched between his two 43-year-old dads on the couch in their home in late July, barefoot and clad in a Mark Sanchez football jersey, Josh tallied up the senators he had met: “Senator Kennedy, Senator Skelos, Senator Huntley, oh, that really stupid guy…”
“Josh!” shushed Friedman.
“I don’t like him! I’m not going to say his name,” Josh said.
Friedman and Zwerin coaxed Josh to talk about the marriage vote. “Why did we go to Albany?” Friedman asked.
Jeff Friedman, Josh and Andy Zwerin made trips to Albany to lobby senators, like Dean Skelos, on same-sex marriage
“For the vote,” Josh replied.
Friedman: “What were we doing?”
Josh: “We were working.”
Friedman: “What kind of work, Josh?”
Josh: “We were lobbying.”
Friedman first became active in the same-sex marriage movement five years ago, after he suffered a heart attack on the day of Zwerin’s mother’s funeral. His partner and their son rushed to the hospital to fill out paperwork for cardiac surgery, only to find that Zwerin had no legal right to make decisions on Friedman’s behalf.
“A nurse asks me, ‘What’s your relationship to him?’” Zwerin said. “We weren’t legally married by the state, so she said, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t sign those.’ ”
The danger passed, but the lesson lingered.
“The person that you know your whole life may not survive, and then they’re saying, in front of Josh, that we’re not family,” Friedman said. “The following week I was still in cardiac intensive care, and having Josh run in and ask, ‘Are we still a family?’—that’s not something that is appropriate for any child to feel.”
When their family started lobbying senators, they brought Josh along. One of the senators they spoke with was Shirley Huntley, a Queens Democrat who voted against same-sex marriage in 2009 and told The New York Times, “If they gave me a million dollars, tax free, I just wouldn’t vote for it.”
Last winter, though, she decided she was undecided. And when Friedman and Zwerin brought Josh to Albany one day, the 73-year-old grandmother met with them with an open mind.
“There was this cute little boy with a whole flock of curly hair,” Huntley said. “He’s a happy child… I guess it just got to my heart, because I could see this child was well-reared. Then they brought him up for me to meet the child, and I was just so happy to meet him.”
Josh, who is biracial, reminded Huntley of one of her own relatives, Friedman said. He recalls telling Huntley how he met Zwerin in high school chemistry class in Merrick, Long Island, 26 years ago. He showed her the photo album from their 2008 marriage in California, a marriage that would be recognized in New York if the law passed.
Advocates had focused for years on the abstract notion of rights, afraid to talk about their families, Friedman said. But most of the conversations he had with the senators he tried to convince were about parenting.
“I first talked to Shirley about the fact that me and Andy, we met in high school. I told her we’d been together for 26 years and that we live lives no different than anybody else,” Friedman said. “I am an active member of the PTA, you know. I am part of the social-action committee of my temple here.”
The meeting with Huntley was impromptu. She didn’t say why she didn’t vote for it in 2009, and Friedman didn’t ask. He recalled that her main concern was whether voting “No” would hurt Josh.
“At the end of the conversation, after we were both crying for a while, that’s when she told me not to worry, to trust her,” Friedman said. “She was going to be voting for marriage.”
Josh was the tipping point, Huntley said later. Though she kept her new position a secret for weeks, she made up her mind that spring day.
“You say, ‘What the hell,’ ” Huntley said, throwing up her hands. “It’s wonderful.”
She expects to be invited to some weddings. She does not expect a primary challenge because of the vote and has received no angry phone calls from pastors in her district. She thinks she did the right thing.
“If people are going to judge me by that vote, after all the other things I have done in my community…” She shook her head. “If they’re going to judge me for that one vote, then so be it.”
Josh remembers Albany mostly for the thrills of playing with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos’ iPad and sitting in Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell’s chair on the chamber floor. But he has some sense of the import of his lobbying at the Capitol.
His parents prodded him to say why marriage equality was needed. He leaned against Zwerin and said, “I just wanted you to be treated good.”
How 8-year-old Josh Zwerin helped pass the same-sex marriage bill
Exactly. Burt and Ernie are puppets, for fuck's sake. What is it about the US, where celebrities (and now puppets) are called upon to inform national public policy? We've had six years of gay marriage here in Canada and we've yet to implode as a country because of it. And remarkably, our puppets and national icons weren't involved in the process. 
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