President Joe Biden on Thursday honored a Maine lawyer and activist who fought to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.S.
Mary Bonauto was one of 20 recipients nationally of the Presidential Citizens Medal, awarded to U.S. citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens. Bonauto was given the medal in a ceremony at The White House.
In 2015, Bonauto, a project director at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders for 25 years and resident of Portland, argued before the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges. The Court’s ruling guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
“Her efforts made millions of families whole and forged a more perfect Union,” the White House said in a statement.
Other recipients of the Presidential Citizens Medal on Thursday were:
- NBA Hall of Famer and former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, D-New Jersey.
- Frank Butler, Jr., a pioneer in battlefield medicine.
- Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming.
- U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, currently the longest serving senator.
- Diane Carlson Evans, an army nurse who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation.
- The late Joseph L. Galloway, a war correspondent from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf who was awarded the Bronze Star.
- Former U.S. Sen Nancy Landon Kassebaum, R-Kansas.
- Former U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware.
- Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, R-New York, who became a gun safety advocate after her son was shot and injured by a gunman on the Long Island Railroad.
- The late Louis Lorenzo Redding, a civil rights advocate who argued segregation cases that laid the legal framework for Brown v. Board of Education.
- Photographer and philanthropist Bobby Sager.
- The late Collins Seitz, the first judge in America to integrate a white public school.
- Eleanor Smeal, a women’s rights activist who helped the Violence Against Women Act become law.
- U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, who recently chaired the Jan. 6 Committee.
- The late Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, a Japanese American put in an internment camp during World War II, whose challenge reached the Supreme Court and led to the end of the camps.
- Thomas Vallely, a Vietnam War veteran and founder of Fulbright University Vietnam.
- Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
- Paula Wallace, founder and president of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.
- Evan Wolfson, a gay rights advocate who was instrumental in the same-sex marriage movement.
