lawyer

#Law and Politics Book Review

WINNING MARRIAGE: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW SAME-SEX COUPLES TOOK ON THE POLITICIANS AND PUNDITS AND WON

Vol. 25 No. 4 (April 2015) pp. 50-55

WINNING MARRIAGE: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW SAME-SEX COUPLES TOOK ON THE POLITICIANS AND PUNDITS AND WON by Marc Solomon. Lebanon, NH: ForEdge. 2014. 360pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781611684018.

Reviewed by Joseph Fischel, Women s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Program, Yale University. Email: joseph.fischel@yale.edu.

Well, what s Stonewall? Obama asked. (p. 270)

The then candidate for the U.S. Senate posed this question to an aide in 2004, nearly ten years before he would assuredly tell the nation, in his second Presidential Inauguration speech, that equality is the star that guides us through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall, a series of synecdoches placing gay rights on moral par with women s rights and civil rights (pp. 313-314).

Marc Solomon s WINNING MARRIAGE: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW SAME-SEX COUPLES TOOK ON THE POLITICIANS AND PUNDITS AND WON has little to do with the Stonewall Riots, and yet everything to do with the country s about-face on same-sex marriage, a transformation in policy and public opinion so crisply captured by Obama s evolving speech acts (pp. 280-300). The legislative, litigation, and ballot battles for marriage equality chronicled in WINNING MARRIAGE occur roughly between state senator Obama s naïve question and President Obama s defiant appeal for gay recognition. Solomon, former executive director of MassEquality, the foremost Massachusetts LGBT rights organization, and current national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, reports on the fight for marriage equality from the trenches: rural lesbians living rooms, state senate backrooms, steps of city halls, street protests. Adorably wonky and unexpectedly enthralling, WINNING MARRIAGE tells a tale of the same-sex marriage struggle too often drowned out by dominant narratives of big gay money, go-it-alone visionary attorneys, and salvation from enlightened judges. Solomon s political memoir reminds us of the politics of marriage equality: with riveting prose, he relays the deal-making, pavement-pounding, and heart-changing all social movements must undertake for success. Although WINNING MARRIAGE was published before marriage was finally, federally won (OBERGEFELL V. HODGES 2015), the book is prescient, at once a social history of marriage equality and a blueprint for future (LGBT or not) justice organizing.

WINNING MARRIAGE is divided into five substantive parts. Massachusetts and New York, the first two, are the lengthiest and best sections of the book, detailing Solomon s and his team of staffers, volunteers and lobbyists multi-pronged campaigns to legislatively secure marriage equality in the eponymous states. In part three, Winning at the Ballot, readers travel with Solomon and Freedom to Marry across four 2012 state ballot initiatives regarding marriage for same-sex couples. Marriage equality advocates score victories across the board, revitalizing the movement after its [*50] crushing 2008 defeat on Proposition 8 in California, the infamous ballot proposition which re-redefined marriage to exclude same-sex couples. The fourth part, A Presidential Journey tracks President Obama s shifting opinion on and eventual championing of marriage equality, and evidences how critical (and steadfast) Solomon and other activists were in changing the avowed position of Obama and other top political leaders. The final and briefest part of the book, Courting Justice, contextualizes UNITED STATES V. WINDSOR and HOLLINGSWORTH V. PERRY, two 2013 landmark Supreme Court rulings for marriage equality (although OBERGEFELL and Obergefell may now be metonymies for the movement), within the panoply of ongoing public relations strategies, fundraising efforts, lower court victories, and grassroots organizing that culturally legitimated same-sex marriage as not merely justiciable ((cf. BAKER V. NELSON 1972) ( The appeal is dismissed for want of a federal question )), but as a judicial no-brainer ((e.g. BASKIN V. BOGAN 2014) ( The discrimination against same-sex couples is irrational )).