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In 1995 Church leaders issued “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” which codified LDS teachings on sex, marriage, and gender roles. The document coincided with further accommodation to feminist concerns, but increased legal and political opposition to same-sex marriage. Church leaders backed political campaigns with the Religious Right in Hawaii, California, and elsewhere to ban same-sex marriage, at the same time also showing greater accommodation to other LGBT rights. Church teachings on homosexuality also evolved in this period to confront biological etiologies, but remained committed to reparative therapy.

Adam Isaiah Green draws on interviews with legally married same-sex Canadian couples to assess the impact of marriage on their relationships. He finds that marriage has complex consequences, both assimilating couples into the mainstream but also providing some with the security to engage in non-monogamy and an unconventional gendered division of labor.

For a legal status which has existed for less than twenty years, the law concerning same sex partnerships and religion has had a turbulent and somewhat confusing history. This chapter examines the story so far. The first part examines how the Civil Partnership Act 2004 originally ignored religion, copying the template of civil marriage. It will then chart how this approach fell apart with the introduction of religious civil partnerships. The second part looks at the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that was enacted by building upon the existing structure for opposite sex marriage rather than using the opportunity to craft a modernised, rationalised and codified law on marriage. This has led to an increasingly complex legal framework as shown by the ‘quadruple lock’ that permits but does not oblige religious groups to conduct same sex marriages.

Katie Oliviero analyzes the campaign by the Protect Marriage Coalition for Proposition 8 in California. She argues that the opponents of same-sex marriage share with supporters the insistence that marriage is a public institution, not simply a private act between two people. Ironically, defenders of traditional marriage mimicked the performative tactics used by LGBT activists—including staging public weddings—with the goal of depicting same-sex marriage as a threat to traditional American values.

Introduces the volume by setting the chapters squarely in the context of the debate within the movement over the desirability of marriage. Mary Bernstein and Verta Taylor survey the history of same-sex marriage, outline the different positions from which gay and lesbian activists have critiqued marriage, and address the projected consequences of marriage for the gay and lesbian community and movement.

I explore the first few years of the twenty-first century through the stories of mothers negotiating a sense of belonging and legitimacy in a sociopolitical context of shifting laws and policies about same-sex marriage and adoption. I explore the ways that mothers navigate the treacherous terrain of socializing their children in a society that denigrates their families—for example, in hospital care, education, and transracial adoption. I explore legal changes in Vermont in 2000 and Massachusetts in 2003 legalizing same-sex unions, and the ways these decisions lay legal groundwork for the widespread use of the civil rights movement as an analogy for the “marriage equality” movement. The legal strategy of arguing for the rights of same-sex couples to marry based on the harms that illegitimacy will impose on their children emerged as an important legal precedent that shaped the way same-sex marriage was legalized federally in 2015.

Amy Stone finds that the Christian Right has developed anti-same-sex marriage discourse that appeals not just to conservative voters, but to liberal and undecided voters as well. She argues that, while same-sex marriage may seem to some like assimilation, the strong opposition it has generated suggests that it continues to challenge dominant cultural norms.

Verta Taylor, Katrina Kimport, Nella Van Dyke, and Ellen Andersen draw on interviews and a random survey of couples who married in San Francisco in 2004 to examine the impact of marriage equality activism on activists themselves. They show that the lesbian and gay couples who participated in this event viewed their weddings as intentional contentious public performances and that the solidarity and collective identity created among participants sparked court action and other forms of collective action geared toward policy change. This article, which is the only previously published chapter in the book, won the 2010 Best Paper Award from the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the American Sociological Association.

Melanie Heath explores the deeply personal stories of Oklahoma couples who traveled to San Francisco to marry in 2004. She finds that rather than using marriage as a way to assimilate into dominant heterosexual culture, lesbian and gay couples viewed marrying as a political act to resist conservative backlash and discrimination in an environment that is decidedly not post-gay.

Katrina Kimport Kimport analyzes wedding pictures of lesbians who married in San Francisco in 2004, arguing that such photos force the onlooker to read the women as a sexual couple, thus challenging deeply held assumptions about normative sex, gender, and sexuality.

This chapter begins an application of the account of natural morality provided in preceding chapters to issues of contemporary political relevance, including universal health care, same-sex marriage and the death penalty. In each case it is argued that this account of natural morality indicates more promising and dialogic paths for future debates than those currently available. The chapter ends with a brief concluding reflection on the relation of the concept of natural morality provided herein to intellectual history.

Explores what changes would be necessary if the Scottish law of marriage were to be extended to same-sex couples. Discusses the European Court of Human Rights decision in Schalk & Kopf v Austria, the position of adultery, and the possibility of a conscience clause that would exempt opponents from conducting same-sex marriages.

Kristine A. Olsen examines why Connecticut’s highly successful marriage equality organization, Love Makes a Family (LMF), decided to close its doors after the 2008 Kerrigan v. Commission of Public Health ruling made Connecticut the second state to legalize same-sex marriage. She argues that the exclusive collective identity of LMF equated same-sex marriage with complete equality for gay men and lesbians, reflecting the worst fears of queer critics who argue that the achievement of same-sex marriage will signal an end of the LGBT movement.

This chapter reviews the state of the broomstick wedding among same-sex couples, both before and after its the legalization in the United States. For many people facing systemic discrimination and marital inequality, jumping the broom symbolizes resistance to the status quo. This chapter examines how same-sex couples who used the broomstick ceremony were depicted in the mainstream media, which portrayed the LGBTQ movement as overwhelmingly white and middle-class. For Black people in this community, however, the ritual can hold a distinct meaning that is connected to their unique historical and contemporary experiences. To examine this distinction, it uses the film Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom (2008) as a starting point in this discussion, analyzing how the film uses (or does not use) jumping the broom to unveil the complexity of being Black and gay in the United States. It then uses an intersectional framework to examine how the broomstick wedding is used by white gay men and lesbians to promote a colorblind vision of the LGBTQ community, though for lesbian and gay African Americans it often holds a double-meaning for them as a group “twice-barred” from legal matrimony, once as enslaved people and then as those who are same-sex attracted.

The final essay, “Religious Toleration and Claims of Conscience,” explores an issue that is now highly controversial, especially after Hobby Lobby: when should those with religious convictions be exempted from legal duties, particularly if those performing those duties promote the rights of others or basic rights of equality? The essay explores various reasons to recognize rights of conscience. In contrast to those who claim that it is always or never appropriate to single out religious claims, it urges that much depends on the particular subject. For a draft law nonreligious pacifists should be treated like religious ones; for an exemption regarding how to kill animals for consumption, limiting exemptions from requirements to religious claims for special treatment is appropriate. The essay explores concern about religious exemptions and contraceptive use and same-sex marriage. The latter issue has been heightened by the Supreme Court’s establishment of a constitutional right to such marriage.

This chapter explores the other main concern that has arisen in recent years: the exclusion of non-religious marriages under the Marriage Act 1949. This chapter will fall into three sections. The first will introduce the issue while the second will examine how this issue has arisen in the public debate, exploring the campaign of Humanists UK during the Parliamentary passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 and subsequent legal and political developments. The final section will then discuss the High Court challenge of the current law in R (On Application of Harrison) v Secretary of State for Justice that concluded that the law interfered with the applicant’s human rights but that this was justified by the fact that the law was currently under review by the Law Commission.

Jeffrey Kosbie examines the ways in which the meaning of marriage is constructed by Mass Equality, the social movement organization behind the campaign to protect marriage equality in Massachusetts. He finds that Mass Equality defined same-sex marriage as a “battleground” issue that was important not because it represented the assimilation of same-sex couples into the mainstream, but because it garnered significant opposition among the general public

I explore family-making in three distinct regions of the country in the early years of the twenty-first century. I use as a lens a series of same-sex marriage performances in 2004 in San Francisco, California; Bernalillo, New Mexico; and Iowa City, Iowa, exploring my interviewees’ differing relationships to these local claims for legal same-sex marriage. I explore the ways lesbian mothers negotitate lack of access to the range of social protections, benefits, and privileges that come with legal marriage at federal, state, and local levels through a reproductive justice lens. This comparative regional emphasis demonstrates stratification between mothers living in different states, with access to different levels of legal protection. At the same time, it also makes evident stratification among mothers of different racial-ethnic identities, tribal identities, and socioeconomic statuses living in the same state that are connected to long histories of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy.

Kathleen E. Hull and Timothy Ortyl consider whether LGBTQ people support the movement’s focus on the right to marry. Through in-depth interviews with community members, Hull and Ortyl show that there is substantial support among LGBTQ constituents for the movement’s broad goals, including the focus on marriage and family concerns.