 Welcome to a special episode of Marriage News Watch. I'm Matt Baume at the American Foundation for Equal Rights and my guest is Daniel Wine, an organizer in Washington, D.C., who's working to get the Australian ad its time on American television. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having me. So, Daniel, you're a relative newcomer to national projects like this. Tell us a little about your background and why you decided to get involved. Sure. So, I'm a sophomore at George Washington University in D.C. and I was back home for Thanksgiving break when I was just sitting on my couch and I came across this its time ad from Get Up Australia and I was really just deeply, deeply moved by just so many facets of the ad and I returned back to D.C. and I started to get a team together to see what we can do about getting this on TV. I was not the only person who was really moved by this ad. There were obviously millions and millions of people around the world and in the United States that felt very strongly about this ad and put together a Facebook page, kind of wanted to see what support I could get and in a matter of a few days and moving in a week, I had over a thousand people. So, logistically, what has had to happen to get us to this point and what more still has to happen? Luckily, I was able to find, actually had two people reach out to me who are digital strategists, one based in D.C. and one based in New York who are both taking on this project pro bono. And then, soon after that, we were able to locate a lawyer who has background and kind of the same nonprofit work who's able to consult with us. And once we had that team assembled, the next big step was really working with Get Up to get the rights to the ad, which is obviously if we're interested in fundraising, get this ad on television is absolutely key. And it took a little longer than we expected, but actually this past week after about two months of working with them and drawing up different legal agreements, we finally formalized the agreement and we're officially in partnership with them to get this on television in the United States. And then, what happens next? What comes next is we're trying to build as large of a coalition as possible with different organizations, different individuals that are interested in not just this ad, but really the message of the ad. We've already raised several thousand dollars with very little promotion and we're looking to have that number exponentially increase as we get the word out to more people. How can people help make that happen? I think the best thing that they could do is one, to go to our Facebook page. It's Facebook.com slash It's Time Equality. They could become a fan, they could follow us on Twitter and most importantly, they can donate through our Facebook application. Has there been any research into how the ad performed in Australia and is there going to be any tracking of how it performs in the US? Yeah, so in Australia, the ad was actually intended, yes for voters, but it was actually intended for Australia's Labour Party. They were meeting in a conference and the purpose of this ad was to get the Labour Party to endorse marriage equality, which they had never done before and it was successful in doing that. There's a think tank in DC called Third Way that conducted some very preliminary study and they found that this ad tested very well in the United States. This ad emphasizes love and commitment over rights and benefits, which is something that they identified and which is really one of the main differences between, I think, what a lot of straight couples think marriage equality is about and what a lot of gay couples and their advocates understand what it's really about. It's not just about legal protections, about legal benefits. It's about all of that, but it's first and foremost about the love and commitment. What is it about this one particular ad that's so special? It is able to really transcend the stigma that the viewer usually has about these types of ads, about this issue and really turned it into something effective. I think that illustrating this concept of commitment with no words, there are no words in the entire ad and a really wonderful soundtrack. I'm a big fan of the music. I think that that's really the reason it's been so successful and that's really the reason I think that given the opportunity to play to a much larger audience in the United States beyond just YouTube, I think that it could definitely make a big impact. All right, give us that Facebook URL one more time. Sure, it's facebook.com slash it's time equality. Okay, I'm Matt Baume at the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Daniel Wan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much.