gay marriage

For more than a century before gay marriage became a hot-button political issue, same-sex unions flourished in America. Pairs of men and pairs of women joined together in committed unions, standing by each other ?for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health? for periods of thirty or forty?sometimes as many as fifty?years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife. In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn?t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture. Among the high-profile couples whose lives and loves are illuminated in the following pages are Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith, literary icon Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, author James Baldwin and Lucien Happersberger, and artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

"Forcing the Spring begins on Election Night 2008, when a controversial California ballot initiative called Proposition 8--which removed the right of gay men and women to marry--passed alongside Barack Obama's stunning victory. Forcing the Spring details how a small but determined group of political and media insiders took the fight for marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court. Gay activists and Hollywood liberals joined together to enlist attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies--the opposing counsels on the Supreme Court's infamous Bush v. Gore ruling--to bring a controversial legal case against Proposition 8 before the highest court in the land. Forcing the Spring is the extraordinary ringside account of this unprecedented effort to shift public opinion and reengineer the political certainties of an era"--.