Defining Marriage: Voices from a Forty-Year Labor of Love

Only a few years ago, marriage was defined as an exclusive club for heterosexuals only. Today, it has expanded to welcome gay and lesbian couples across the entire United States.

Defining Marriage traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it. Writer Matt Baume provides an intimate glimpse into the private lives of those who dreamed of marriage in the 1970s, the survivors of the 1980s, the audacious pioneers of the 1990s, the tireless soldiers of the 2000s, and the champions who won marriage today.

Along the way, he explores the individual stories of the people who participated in this revolution, examines what marriage has become, and shows with vivid, compelling personal narratives how the act of defining marriage forever changed the lives and loves of the people who fought to define the institution. As the journey to equality unfolds over the years, Baume finds himself unexpectedly evaluating his own self-contradictory life as a marriage activist with no plans to marry his longtime partner.

Over the course of years, the story of marriage is recounted through intimate, revealing conversations with prominent LGBT figures, allies, and grassroots activists. Dustin Lance Black shares the story of how his escape from childhood abuse prepared him to bring hope to millions; Dan Savage recalls his stubborn rejection of the closet at what was then an unthinkably young age; and Andrew Sullivan remembers the call for marriage in the 1980s that earned him enemies amongst conservatives and queers alike. Baume visits with Rob Reiner, who inherited a passion for social justice from his real-life parents and his television family; San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose personal principles tested his career ambitions when he stood up to an unjust law and the President of the United States; and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a former seminary student who picked up the mantle of LGBT liberation after the death of a friend and mentor.

We meet accidental activists thrust into an international spotlight, like Amy Balliett of Join the Impact; Book of Mormon star Gavin Creel; and Clela Rorex, who in 1975 became America's first government official to issue a marriage license to gay couples. As marriage transforms, people all over the country find themselves and their loved ones at a crossroads of history: Molly McKay, who showed up at marriage counters to demanded a license every Valentine's Day for a decade until someone finally said yes; Jenny Kanelos, a small-town girl who mobilized all of Broadway; Juan and Tim Clark-Lucero, forced to race against the clock to marry before their legal window closed.

Baume provides rare, behind-the-scenes access to personal conflicts around the national struggle. While furious protestors clash on the steps of the Supreme Court, we are ushered inside to witness the same debate playing out amongst the Justices. Readers witness gay political leaders locked in desperate, emotional struggles to pass marriage bills in the back halls of capitols, and are are privy to the conversations of families as they discover what the shifting landscape of marriage means for their own relationships.

From decades past to this moment in history, from halls of power to private bedrooms, from the political to the personal, Defining Marriage is the story of how people from all walks of life fought to change marriage -- and how fighting for marriage, in turn, changed them.