Two people from the Bay State were given the White House’s second-highest honor this week.
Mary Bonauto, an attorney who fought for same-sex marriage at the state and national levels, and Bobby Sager, a Malden philanthropist and photographer who widened “the aperture of the human spirit” were both awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Biden Thursday. The honor is awarded to citizens “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
Mary Bonauto was the key litigator in the 2003 landmark case in Massachusetts that gave gay and lesbian couples the legal right to marry. She also argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2015 decision that codified same-sex marriage nationwide.
Sager’s foundation set up micro-lending banks for small businesses in Rwanda, teacher training in Pakistan and medical training in Afghanistan.
The two received sustained standing ovations from the room as they were recognized.
“You’re all, and I mean sincerely, you’re all incredible. Incredible. Your activists who turned pain into purpose, forced open the doors of equality and justice. Attorneys who changed not just the laws, but society and brought america closer to our highest stated ideals,” Biden remarked.
A total of 20 people were honored at the event, including former congresswoman Liz Cheney and Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. They both led the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Biden honored four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
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