Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con

With same-sex marriage igniting a firestorm of controversy in the press and in the courts, in legislative chambers and in living rooms, Andrew Sullivan, a pioneering voice in the debate, has brought together two thousand years of argument in an anthology of historic inclusiveness and evenhandedness. Among the selections included here:

– The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in support of same-sex marriage
– Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Scalia’s dissent in the 2003 landmark Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws
– President George W. Bush’s call for a Federal Marriage Amendment
– John Kerry’s Senate speech urging defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act
– Harvard historian Nancy F. Cott’s testimony before the Vermont House Judiciary Committee
– Reverend Peter J. Gomes on the distinction between civil and religious marriage
– Stanley Kurtz on the politics of gay marriage
– Evan Wolfson on the popularity of the right to marry among lesbians and gay men
– New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks’ conservative case for same-sex marriage
– Excerpts from Genesis, Leviticus, and other essential biblical texts
– Aristophanes’s classic theory of same-sex love, from Plato’s Symposium
– Hannah Arendt on marriage as a fundamental right
– Camille Paglia’s skepticism

Representing the full range of perspectives and the most cogent and arresting arguments, Same-Sex Marriage is essential to a balanced understanding of the most pressing cultural question we face today.