Tributes poured in on Sunday following the news of the death of director and actor Rob Reiner and his wife, film producer and photographer Michele Reiner. If you take a look, you’ll notice that many go beyond his film work and speak glowingly about his progressive activism—except for one missive from President Donald Trump.
The president lashed out earlier today, claiming the filmmaker had “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” and hated that his administration “surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”
Reiner was a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), a nonprofit established to sponsor a federal lawsuit to overturn California’s Proposition 8 in 2009.
The ballot proposition banned same-sex marriage and added language to the California Constitution, stating “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
Religious organizations, including the Catholic Bishops of California and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, advocated for the proposition through in-person canvassing and millions of dollars in donations.
The Hollywood Reporter reported that Reiner collaborated with political strategists to establish AFER and leveraged his entertainment industry connections to secure $3 million to $5 million in financial backing from wealthy film producers to support its legal work.
AFER supported two couples—Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo—and argued that Prop. 8 discriminated on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.
Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Prop. 8 in 2010, citing that it violated both the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court due to appeals. The court decided in 2013 that the Prop. 8 sponsors did not have legal standing to dispute the ruling because they could not demonstrate a “personal and tangible harm” that went beyond a “generalized grievance.”
Prop. 8 wasn’t just a one-off in Reiner’s progressive activism. In 1998, he led the campaign to pass Proposition 10 in California. It passed that November, authorizing a $0.50 tax on cigarettes and up to $1 on other tobacco products, such as cigars. The money generated went to First 5 California, which distributes funds to the state’s county branches in support of programs for young children, such as health care and school readiness.
“I loved Rob,” Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar for her starring role in Reiner’s film Misery, said in a statement to Deadline. “He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist.”
Despite these progressive policy wins for Reiner, he was still compassionate enough to mourn people whose politics he despised. After Charlie Kirk was murdered in September, Reiner appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored. “That should never happen to anybody,” he said of Kirk’s violent and public assassination. “I don’t care what your political beliefs…that’s not a solution to solving problems.”
As of this writing, Reiner’s murder is still being investigated by Los Angeles police, and Hollywood is left to mourn one of its most visionary activists.
