Family Matters: Queer Households and the Half-Century Struggle for Legal Recognition

In 1960, consensual sodomy was a crime in every state in America. Fifty-five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the fundamental right to marry. In the span of two generations, American law underwent a dramatic transformation. Though the fight for marriage equality has received a considerable amount of attention from scholars and the media, it was only a small part of the more than half-century struggle for queer family rights. Family Matters uncovers these decades of advocacy, which reshaped the place of same-sex sexuality in American law and society - and ultimately made marriage equality possible. This book, however, is more than a history of queer rights. Marie-Amélie George reveals that national legal change resulted from shifts at the state and local levels, where the central figures were everyday people without legal training. Consequently, she offers a new way of understanding how minority groups were able to secure meaningful legal change.

Author: Marie-Am?lie George
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 09/19/2024
Series: Studies in Legal History
Pages: 385
Weight: 1.5lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.10w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781009284400