Love Unites Us: A Book Review
Historic moments may only last a day, but rarely, if ever do they happen without a journey to them. For same-sex couples wishing to legally commit their lives to one another for better or worse, June 26, 2015, was a day they had been waiting and working for — for many years. On that summer day, in what GLAD called a “blockbuster legal and cultural moment for the country,” the Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion in the case Obergefell v. Hodges (576 U.S. __ ). The effect of the Court’s ruling was to strike down same-sex marriage bans across the country, granting same-sex couples the equal right to marry. The long and winding road to this moment is chronicled in Love Unites Us: Winning the Freedom to Marry in America (The New Press, 2016, 358 p.).
Love Unites Us is the story of the marriage equality movement told by the voices of those who have lived it, through a series of essays edited by Leslie J. Gabel-Brett and Kevin M. Cathcart. The book begins in the 1970’s with the story of the first same-sex marriage cases and its “closing arguments” are a three essay breakdown of Obergefell. It examines state and federal legislation’s impact on marriage equality, with pieces on The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, a ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment passed in 2008.
The book isn’t only a thorough legal and legislative history analysis by scholars and strategists, it is also a very personal and emotional history. It includes the voices of plaintiffs in well-known marriage equality litigation, such as Nina Baehr and Genora Dancel, the first couple to sue and receive a positive ruling in the landmark Hawaii case, Baehr v. Lewin (74 Haw. 530). Pat Ewert recounts the day she met her wife, famous activist Vernita Gray and the day she received the news that they would be the first same-sex couple to marry in the state of Illinois, not long before Vernita died of breast cancer. High school sweethearts Maritza López Avilés and Iris Delia Rivera Rivera describe the struggle it took to win the right to marry each other in Puerto Rico, after waiting 39 years.
The journey to marriage equality was filled with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. However, the fight for LGBTQ rights did not end in 2015 in the Supreme Court, as the conclusion of the book emphasizes. The final series of essays examine the future of the movement, including criminal justice reform, health care, and transgender rights. (LE)
