Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law

Join Queers for Economic Justice, and our Beyond Marriage project, as we support this important book.

Nancy Polikoff discusses and signs her book:
BEYOND (STRAIGHT AND GAY) MARRIAGE: VALUING ALL FAMILIES UNDER THE LAW
The First Title In The Beacon Press Queer Ideas Series

MARCH 11, 2008
RECEPTION 6:00 PM, PROGRAM 7:00 PM
LGBT CENTER, 208 W. 13TH ST. http://www.gaycenter.org/about/location
NEW YORK CITY
212-620-7310

Gay rights activist and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff writes that "marriage as a family form is not more important or valuable than other forms of family, so the law should not give it more value." She criticizes the conservative "marriage movement" for blaming all social problems on the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage.

She also takes issue with the gay rights "marriage-equality movement" for attributing the legal problems facing same-sex couples to the inability to marry, rather than to the "special rights" inappropriately granted married couples. When marriage serves as the bright dividing line between those relationships that legally matter and those that do not, Polikoff notes, countless families suffer.

Her valuing-all-families solution is true to the roots of the gay rights movement and consistent with decades-old legal changes that have made marriage matter less.

"Passionate but completely grounded in reality, Polikoff challenges LGBT rights advocates to see beyond gay equality arguments and question the fundamental fairness of limiting family recognition based on marriage, gay or straight. It is a powerful call for social justice." -Nan D. Hunter, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Law Project and professor of law, Brooklyn Law School