Maggie Gallagher - Biography

Biography

A daughter of William Walter Gallagher Sr. and his wife, the former Darrilyn Doris Stenz, Maggie Gallagher is originally from Lake Oswego, Oregon, where she attended Lakeridge High School. She has three siblings: Kathleen, William Jr., and Colleen. Her parents were initially active in their local Catholic parish, but drifted over time. Her mother left the Church when she was eight, but remained interested in spirituality. Maggie Gallagher herself moved toward an atheism influenced by Ayn Rand and, to a lesser extent, Robert A. Heinlein. In her twenties she reverted to Catholicism because her experience as a single mother made her consider the importance of fathers and the linkage of sex to procreation.

In 1982, she earned a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale University, where she belonged to the Party of the Right in the Yale Political Union. On October 6, 2010, she returned to the Union to debate against same-sex marriage with opponent Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry and fellow alumnus of the Yale Political Union. Gallagher married Raman Srivastav in 1993 and they have one son together. Gallagher also has a son born out of wedlock from a previous relationship.

Gallagher attended the premiere reading of 8, Dustin Lance Black's play about the trial surrounding California's Proposition 8, where a depiction of her was performed by Jayne Houdyshell. She expressed the opinion that most people would find the work "kind of dull". In a Los Angeles performance, the Gallagher role was performed by Jane Lynch.