America's War on Same-Sex Couples and their Families
America's War on Same-Sex Couples and their Families
America's War on Same-Sex Couples and Their Families is a legal, political, and social history of constitutional amendments in twenty American states (with 43 percent of the nation's population) that prohibited government recognition of all forms of relationship rights (marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships) for same-sex couples. Based on 175 interviews with gay and lesbian pairs in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin, the volume has great human-interest value and chronicles how same-sex couples and their children coped within harsh legal environments. The work ends with a lively explanation of how the federal judiciary rescued these families from their own governments. In addition, the book provides a model of the grassroots circumstances under which harassed minority groups migrate out of oppressive state regimes, together with an estimate of the economic and other costs (to the refugees and their governments) of the flight from persecution.
- Documents the grass-roots effects of state bans on marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships through real-life narratives that will appeal to a wide range of readers
- Provides a lively discussion on how federal judges invalidated state marriage prohibitions
- Presents a fully developed model of the circumstances under which persecuted minority groups depart from oppressive state regimes
Reviews & endorsements
"This meticulously researched and artfully written volume reveals in vivid terms the real pain and suffering inflicted on gay and lesbian Americans as a result of the culture wars. Not only does this volume bring voice to those who directly suffered as a result of the super-DOMAs, but it also reveals the cynical political calculus that led to the implementation of these evil legal regimes. Pinello has written what is sure to be a classic volume."
Charles Anthony Smith, University of California, Irvine
"America's War on Same-Sex Couples and their Families devotes more than a hundred pages to quotations from interviews by the author with dozens of lesbian and gay couples living in states with 'super-DOMAs' denying them a vast array of legal rights and benefits. These interviews usefully illustrate the many ways that their exclusion from marriage harmed these couples and their children. In contrast, the author's 2010 interview with Phil Burress, the father of the congressional DOMA and Ohio's super-DOMA, is educational because it preserves this activist's frightening logic in his own words."
William N. Eskridge, Jr, Yale Law School
"Marriage matters. Pinello's study narrates the heart-wrenching stories of life without the all-access pass to financial, legal, emotional, and social recognition that binds couples and families together. These oral histories sit alongside his meticulous account of state-level DOMA politics and of the hope offered through judicial challenges. Required reading for all students of the political process and its impact on the everyday lives of citizens."
Angelia R. Wilson, University of Manchester
"I love Pinello's idea of [former Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia as the unintending midwife of the birth of the constitutional right of same-sex marriage."
Honorable Richard A. Posner, Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School
Product details
September 2016Hardback
9781107123595
344 pages
235 × 157 × 23 mm
0.6kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. State judicial interpretations of super-DOMAs
- 3. The effects of super-DOMAs on same-sex couples
- 4. The effects of super-DOMAs on families with children being raised by same-sex couples
- 5. Super-DOMAs and LGBT migration: fight or flight?
- 6. How the federal courts rescued same-sex couples and their families
- 7. Conclusion.
