Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1593282 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780807066218
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

About the Author

Customer Reviews

ELEGANT EQUALITY
Lavish in prose and photography, COURTING EQUALITY presents the struggle to equal rights in marriage by Massachusetts' gay and lesbian community. Beyond the obvious, and above the gloss of Marilyn Humphries' stunning photo journal, Patricia A. Gozemba and Karen Kahn offer the reader a journey through worldwide discrimination which bends a bit as same sex couples arrive on the page grasping that one little piece of paper that unbars so many doors. These couples are sometimes both in wedding gowns or both in tuxedoes or anything else that expresses the joy of the moment, and Humphries, Gozemba, and Kahn order the rise of this movement in a powerful narrative that's hard to put down. I am happy to see Kahn and Humphries working again together for I so fondly remember their collaborations at Sojourner The Women's Forum during that publication's heyday late last century. I assume Gozemba has rallied this writer and this artist and added her own pizzazz to the endeavor. Huzzah!!! Good reading for anyone.

Words and Stories that Need to Be Shared
Courting Equality is a glossy, large-format work, but to call it a coffee-table book is to do it an injustice. The text and photographs tell the mesmerizing story of the fight for marriage equality in Massachusetts. The book is at once a celebration, a history, and a reminder that we are all still writing a final chapter.

Whether you live in Massachusetts or elsewhere, you will find much in the volume to inform you about one of the hot-button issues of our time. The book opens, after an introductory overview, on the day of the Supreme Judicial Court's Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The authors take us through the initial reactions of Mary Bonauto, the lead attorney on the case, and the seven plaintiff couples as they hasten to the press conference.

The next chapter brings us back to the early days of the LGBT civil-rights movement in Massachusetts, where the state helped set a trend for the nation. This is not intended to be a complete history of the fight for same-sex marriage, however. It is in fact greatly educational to read a history that eschews overviews and details the ups and downs within a particular state. The tale reads in part like a suspense novel, full of political machinations.

This is more than a story of politics, however. Throughout the work, we hear the voices of regular LGBT citizens and their allies. The last chapter is a celebration of the first same-sex wedding ceremonies. The authors place us in line with the first couples waiting to wed on May 17, 2004, and convey the giddy atmosphere that prevailed. They tell us the wedding stories of the seven Goodridge plaintiffs and many others besides.

Even if you do not read a word of the text, the photographs alone make this a volume worth keeping. Humphries, who has captured images of the LGBT-rights movement over the past 25 years, shows us legislators and lawyers at work, activists on the march, couples in love, and families celebrating. It is photojournalism at its finest.

The volume takes us almost to the present, when the constitutional convention in January 2007 gave initial approval to placing a DOMA amendment on the ballot. The legislature now has to pass the amendment again before it can go to the voters in 2008. Marriage rights for same-sex couples in Massachusetts still hang by a thread. Reading Courting Equality, however, will tell you why they are needed. Buy it for yourself, your family, and friends, and ask your local library to stock it. These are words and pictures that need to be shared.

History and Conscience and Art Go Together
I'm a long-time admirer of the photography of Marilyn Humphries, whose political conscience and capacity to connect deeply and unobtrusively with her subjects place her in a very special class of her art. I'm also a heterosexual male who had quietly been part of the majority of Americans who favor, in principle, the right of every adult couple to marry. But this magnificent book has turned me into an activist who will stand up at every proper opportunity and fight for that right alongside the many courageous individuals who have worked for it by themselves until now. The concrete story of that fight (superbly written by Ms. Gozemba and Ms. Kahn) sweeps away a merely abstract understanding of what has been happening. A detailed history of the legal fight in Massachusetts is riveting. But if that isn't enough for some who still question the right of an adult to marry, then they will have to search their feelings as they look at Marilyn Humphries' photographs of the seven couples who won Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, photographs that often include their children, neighbors and pets. I was profoundly moved and inspired by these individuals (whom I will certainly never meet in person). I was reminded that everything we call a "human right" is the result of great struggle, and I was also encouraged that those who persevere do so for all of us. And yes--this book is magnificently produced! It should be owned and circulated by every American who believes our country needs to continue its self-examination and willingness to advance.