"At its core, the freedom-to-marry movement is about the same thing every civil rights struggle has been about: taking seriously our country's promise to be a nation its citizens can make better, its promise to be a place where people don't have to give up their differences or hide them in order to be treated equally."Why Marriage Matters offers a compelling, intelligently reasoned discussion of a question that still remains in the national consciousness. ...

In early 2013 same-sex marriage was legal in only ten states and the District of Columbia. That year the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor appeared to open the door to marriage equality. In Texas, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes, together for sixteen years and deeply in love, wondered why no one had stepped across the threshold to challenge their state's 2005 constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. They agreed to join a lawsuit being put together by Akin Gump...

A history of the fight for same-sex marriage in Canada.Few issues have dominated recent Canadian politics like the legalization of same-sex marriage.As a political correspondent for The Canadian Press, Sylvain Larocque had a front-row seat for this battle in the fight for gay rights in Canada. He recounts the story here on every level, from the legal decisions to the social impact to the political reactions. He analyzes the judgments, laws, and election strategies, p...

The law affects us all, and even your most basic day-to-day choices and actions have legal implications. Yet few people have much knowledge of the law or understand complicated legal terminology – and lawyers’ fees are beyond many people’s reach. This book will provide you with the necessary information on a wide range of legal issues that may impact on your daily life – at work, in the home, on the road, in the marketplace, and in the courtroom.Written by experts specifically for ...

In 1958 Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, two young lovers from Caroline County, Virginia, got married. Soon they were hauled out of their bedroom in the middle of the night and taken to jail. Their crime? Loving was white, Jeter was not, and in Virginia—as in twenty-three other states then—interracial marriage was illegal. Their experience reflected that of countless couples across America since colonial times. And in challenging the laws against their marriage, the Lovings closed the boo...

This book is intended for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and non-gay readers. It is divided into three sections: “On Being Gay,” “On Being Politically Correct,” and “On Being Gay in the Real World.” Section I, “On Being Gay,” focuses almost exclusively on what it means to be gay, the kinds of discrimination gays and lesbians face in their daily routines and lives, and how to face those issues of inequality, discrimination, and bigotry. Section II, “On Being Politically Corr...

The advancement of LGBT rights has occurred through struggles large and small-on the streets, around kitchen tables, and on the Web. Lawsuits have also played a vital role in propelling the movement forward, and behind every case is a human story: a landlord in New York seeks to evict a gay man from his home after his partner of ten years dies of AIDS; school officials in Wisconsin look the other way as a gay teenager is repeatedly and viciously harassed by other students; a lesbian couple...

Firsthand accounts from the attorneys and advocates who brought the historic cases and fought to secure the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.The June 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was a sweeping victory for the freedom to marry, but it was one step in a long process. Love Unites Us is the history of activists' passion and persistence in the struggle for marriage rights for same-sex couples in the United States, told in the words of th...

Compares today’s same-sex marriage movement to the experiences of black people in the mid-nineteenth century.The staggering string of victories by the gay rights movement’s campaign for marriage equality raises questions not only about how gay people have been able to successfully deploy marriage to elevate their social and legal reputation, but also what kind of freedom and equality the ability to marry can mobilize.Wedlocked turns to history to compare today’s same-sex ma...

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2015: “A riveting account of a watershed moment in our history.”—President Bill ClintonRenowned litigator Roberta Kaplan knew from the beginning that it was the perfect case to bring down the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer had been together as a couple, in sickness and in health, for more than forty years—enduring society’s homophobia as well as Spyer’s near total paralysis from multip...

Canada likes to present itself as a paragon of gay rights. This book contends that Canada’s acceptance of gay rights, while being beneficial to some, obscures and abets multiple forms of oppression to the detriment and exclusion of some queer and trans bodies.Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging seeks to unsettle the assumption that inclusion equals justice. The contributors detail how the fight for acceptance engenders compli...

The case for marriage equality and monogamy in a democratic societyThe institution of marriage stands at a critical juncture. As gay marriage equality gains acceptance in law and public opinion, questions abound regarding marriage's future. Will same-sex marriage lead to more radical marriage reform? Should it? Antonin Scalia and many others on the right warn of a slippery slope from same-sex marriage toward polygamy, adult incest, and the dissolution of marriage a...