The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage

Following the recent United States Supreme Court victory concerning marriage equality, there have been a series of books examining how gay and lesbian activists worked to achieve that victory, the struggles they went through, and the battles they fought. Sasha Issenberg adopts a more law-focused perspective on the various court battles over the state, and eventually federal, definition of marriage, with the final goal of allowing gay and lesbian people to marry so they could have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples.

While the book focuses a little bit on politics, mostly at the federal level, it really focuses on the courtroom and legal tactics used by different organizations, groups, and individuals. There is not much talk of working with communities to remove the stigma concerning homosexuality from people in the community, and only a brief mention of parades and the like, and only then really about how such activities could build new ways to fight the issue in the courts.

Like many battles, there are outsized personalities, disagreements early on in the fight regarding which direction to go in, and ultimately, a heroic coming together of the various anti-discrimination groups.