David Cole reviews four books on same-sex “marriage” in the New York Review of Books. The books are:
Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? What We’ve Learned from the Evidence
by William N. Eskridge Jr. and Darren R. Spedale
Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $25.00 (paper)
Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution
by Evan Gerstmann
Cambridge University Press, 231 pp., $70.00; $23.99 (paper)
Marriage, Sexuality, and Gender
by Robin West
Paradigm, 287 pp., $91.00; $26.95 (paper)
Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts
edited by Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello Jr., and Robin Fretwell Wilson
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty/Rowman and Littlefield, 329 pp., $85.00; $34.95 (paper)
Excerpt from the review:
Eskridge, Spedale, and West also argue that the best forum for achieving lasting victory is legislatures, not the courts. That seems less clear. There is no question that those seeking change cannot restrict their advocacy to the courts; a multitiered strategy is critical. But the recent court decisions suggest that it would be wrong to write off the judiciary. In view of the polls showing continued popular resistance to gay marriage, progress in the political realm is likely to be difficult. At the same time, the patent weakness of the legal arguments against recognizing same-sex marriage suggest that courts may be a more receptive forum. Polls show much less resistance to civil unions, and in some instances, majority support for that alternative. Thus, a state-by-state strategy that pursues civil unions politically, and same-sex marriage through the courts, may be most likely to succeed.
