M.V. Lee Badgett’s When Gay People Get Married delivers an important work that examines the effects on societies that allow same-sex couples to marry.
While Badgett is an American scholar and a lesbian who advocates same-sex marriage, she scrutinized research that had already been conducted on this topic. Badgett claims that “the value of including stories of marriage in the context of real people — those Dutch couples I interviewed and even my own story — is to add a layer of knowledge that has been largely missing in the debate. The personal stories link the broad abstract numbers and the powerful cultural institution to the individual lives affected by the law.”
Badgett examines what happens in European societies that allow same-sex couples to marry. She studies why people marry in the first place, what marriage means to both homosexuals and heterosexuals, whether allowing gays to marry changes heterosexual marriage, and whether the right to marry would change the gay community.
There are numerous publications on same-sex marriage, but this title appears to be the most comprehensive, scholarly examination of the topic yet. Readers who are already advocates of marriage equality will be moved to think about marriage in ways that they, perhaps, have not considered before. I was stunned to discover that there are many members of the gay community who are anti-marriage for various reasons, but particularly because of its political and religious history.
Recommended for academic libraries, especially those specializing in sociology, gender studies, and gay/lesbian studies.
Reviewed by, Maria Landrum
Children’s Librarian
Jefferson Parish Library
Metairie, Louisiana