Marriage Rights And Gay Rights

In persuading the Supreme Court that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the LGBT rights movement has achieved its most important objective of the last few decades. Throughout its history, the marriage equality movement has been criticized by those who believe marriage rights were a conservative cause overshadowing a host of more important issues. Now that nationwide marriage equality is a reality, everyone who cares about LGBT rights must grapple with how best to promote the interests of sexual and gender identity minorities in a society that permits same-sex couples to marry. This book brings together 12 original essays by leading scholars of law, politics, and society to address the most important question facing the LGBT movement today: What does marriage equality mean for the future of LGBT rights? After Marriage Equality explores crucial and wide-ranging social, political, and legal issues confronting the LGBT movement, including the impact of marriage equality on political activism and mobilization, antidiscrimination laws, transgender rights, LGBT elders, parenting laws and policies, religious liberty, sexual autonomy, and gender and race differences. The book also looks at how LGBT movements in other nations have responded to the recognition of same-sex marriages, and what we might emulate or adjust in our own advocacy. Aiming to spark discussion and further debate regarding the challenges and possibilities of the LGBT movement’s future, After Marriage Equality will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of sexual equality.

Richard D. Mohr adopts a humanistic and philosophical approach to assessing public policy issues affecting homosexuals. His nuanced case for legal and social acceptance applies widely held ethical principles to various issues, including same-sex marriage, AIDS, and gays in the military. Mohr examines the nature of prejudices and other cultural forces that work against lesbian and gay causes and considers the role that sexuality plays in national rituals. In his support of same-sex marriage, Mohr defines matrimony as the development and maintenance of intimacy through which people meet their basic needs and carry out their everyday living, and he contends that this definition applies equally to homosexual and heterosexual couples. By drawing on culturally, legally, and ethically based arguments, Mohr moves away from tired political rhetoric and reveals the important ways in which the struggle for gay rights and acceptance relates to mainstream American society, history, and political life.

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 marriage movement to the experiences of newly emancipated black people in the mid-nineteenth century, when they were able to legally marry for the first time. Maintaining that the transition to greater freedom was both wondrous and perilous for newly emancipated people, Katherine Franke relates stories of former slaves’ involvements with marriage and draws lessons that serve as cautionary tales for today’s marriage rights movements. While “be careful what you wish for” is a prominent theme, they also teach us how the rights-bearing subject is inevitably shaped by the very rights they bear, often in ways that reinforce racialized gender norms and stereotypes. Franke further illuminates how the racialization of same-sex marriage has redounded to the benefit of the gay rights movement while contributing to the ongoing subordination of people of color and the diminishing reproductive rights of women. Like same-sex couples today, freed African-American men and women experienced a shift in status from outlaws to in-laws, from living outside the law to finding their private lives organized by law and state licensure. Their experiences teach us the potential and the perils of being subject to legal regulation: rights—and specifically the right to marriage—can both burden and set you free.

The definitive history of the marriage equality debate in the United States, praised by Library Journal as "beautifully and accessibly written. . . . An essential work.” As a legal scholar who first argued in the early 1990s for a right to gay marriage, William N. Eskridge Jr. has been on the front lines of the debate over same‑sex marriage for decades. In this book, Eskridge and his coauthor, Christopher R. Riano, offer a panoramic and definitive history of America’s marriage equality debate. The authors explore the deeply religious, rabidly political, frequently administrative, and pervasively constitutional features of the debate and consider all angles of its dramatic history. While giving a full account of the legal and political issues, the authors never lose sight of the personal stories of the people involved, or of the central place the right to marry holds in a person’s ability to enjoy the dignity of full citizenship. This is not a triumphalist or one‑sided book but a thoughtful history of how the nation wrestled with an important question of moral and legal equality.

Revised and updated to include the most current information on same-sex marriage, The Limits to Union documents a legal struggle at its moment of greatest historical importance. "The Limits to Union is a superb book about the complexities of recent political struggles over same-sex marriage. Goldberg-Hiller offers a sophisticated account of egalitarian rights advocacy and the reaction it has generated from established majorities animated by a 'new common sense' of exclusionary sovereign authority. The author's analysis is multidimensional and nuanced, but the core argument is bold, important, and well-supported. I recommend it very highly to everyone interested in understanding the character, possibilities, and constraints of civil rights amid our contemporary culture wars." -Michael McCann, author of Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization "In this excellent book, Goldberg-Hiller uses Hawaii's experience to examine the interaction between courts and the political system. . . . Relying on briefs, legislative statements, and interviews with activists from both sides of the question, he views this familiar debate . . . through the unfamiliar prism of gay marriage, which allows him to gauge the viability and the pliability of the American civil rights ideal, and how gay and lesbian issues fit (or don't fit) within that ideal." -Willian Heinzen, New York Law Journal "Goldberg-Hiller presents the history of the same-sex marriage question since it first sparked debate in Hawaii. He follows the shifting debate through court cases, state propositions, and state and federal legislatures, considering questions about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and the concept of equal protection under the law for gays and lesbians. This detailed treatment of the legal issues surrounding same-sex marriages is highly recommended." -R. L. Abbott, University of Evansville "[A] valuable contribution to the field, situating the gay marriage debate in broader contexts of theory, law and practice. [S]ame-sex marriage is an important issue...that finds itself caught in the friction points of much larger debates over the nature of rights, the limits of sovereignty and the proper role of courts and law in a democratic society. The Limits to Union should therefore be of interest even to those who do not think of themselves as interested in gay and lesbian rights issues." -Evan Gerstmann, Loyola Marymount University, Law and Politics Book Review

The debate over marriage equality for same-sex couples rages across the country. Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage boldly moves the discussion forward by focusing on the larger, more fundamental issue of marriage and the law. The root problem, asserts law professor and LGBT rights activist Nancy Polikoff, is that marriage is a bright dividing line between those relationships that legally matter and those that don't. A woman married to a man for nine months is entitled to Social Security survivor's benefits when he dies; a woman living for nineteen years with a man or woman to whom she is not married receives nothing. Polikoff reframes the debate by arguing that all family relationships and households need the economic stability and emotional peace of mind that now extend only to married couples. Unmarried couples of any sexual orientation, single-parent households, extended family units, and myriad other familial configurations need recognition and protection to meet the concerns they all share: building and sustaining economic and emotional interdependence, and nurturing the next generation. Couples should have the choice to marry based on the spiritual, cultural, or religious meaning of marriage in their lives, asserts Polikoff. While marriage equality for same-sex couples is a civil rights victory, she contends that no one should have to marry in order to reap specific and unique legal results. A persuasive argument that married couples should not receive special rights denied to other families, Polikoff shows how the law can value all families, and why it must.

One would think that by now the issue of marriage and the simple right for two people who love one another to be together would be settled. Even in the 21st century, people ask, "What is marriage?" Although the word "marriage" isn't even mentioned in the Constitution, readers will learn why this issue has been a subject of debate for years, whether for interracial or same-sex couples. Primary source documents, quotes, and explanations of Supreme Court rulings help set the scene and tell the evolving tale of equality for marriage rights in the United States.

The idea of this book began in a conversation David Blankenhorn had with the president of Freedom to Marry, a group advocating equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. This man asked Blankenhorn, a leading figure in the “marriage movement,” to endorse his group’s objectives. Feeling a bit defensive, Blankenhorn replied, “Every child deserves a mother and a father.” The Future of Marriage is the result of that conversation. In their current demands, Blankenhorn points out, gay and lesbian leaders are not asking for marriage with an adjective in front of it, but marriage itself. So in that sense, what marriage is and why it matters is ultimately what this debate is all about. What exactly is this institution to which gay and lesbian activists are seeking access? Why do we have it in the first place? Where did it come from? What is it for? How is it changing? These are some of the hard questions The Future of Marriage confronts. David Blankenhorn says that if same sex marriage debate is to be “redemptive rather than merely divisive,” it must accept the principle that all persons are equal in dignity. But it must also help us to rediscover and renew marriage as the main protector of our children and our primary social institution.