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REVIEWS
"This heartwarming journey into the ordinary lives of ten extraordinary couples seats you at the family table, where you can feel the radiance of their love, get caught up in their laughter and witness the worries and hardships that these couples and their children experience, like other families, yet made all the more perilous by their lack of legal protections. Deakin succeeds in putting human faces on the issue of marriage inequality."
—Davina Kotulski, author of Why You Should Give a Damn About Gay Marriage

“In a world that too often takes marriage (and divorce) for granted, here are stories of ten couples whose every step toward lifelong commitment took courage. Michelle Bates Deakin is sometimes searing, sometimes funny, and often touching portraits bring into focus not just the hard-won ordinariness of today's same-sex families—complete with soccer practice, church functions, and prickly in-laws—but the gay marriage movement's deep roots in the American tradition. As these couples struggle to form more perfect unions, establish justice, and insure domestic tranquility, you realize: it doesn't come any more American than this."
—Jonathan Rauch, author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America

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Additional Information • paperback • 144 pp. • Dimensions: 5½ x 8½ • Publication Date: December 2005 • ISBN 1-55896-491-6 • Price: $14.00 • Buy Now!

Gay Marriage, Real Life
Ten Stories of Love and Family
Michelle Bates Deakin

This intimate account of ten same-sex couples brings to life how the decision to marry has affected them and their extended families. These personal journeys present a range of experiences, from a mother who became a gay rights activist when her youngest child came out as a lesbian, to a girl whose realization that her fathers were not married spurred the men to join the gay marriage lawsuit in Massachusetts, to a lesbian couple and devoted mothers of twins who fight for same-sex adoption rights in Oklahoma. Deakin chronicles both their private strides toward acceptance and their public struggles to advance gay rights. Thoughtful and timely, Gay Marriage, Real Life tells the powerful and dramatic story of same-sex marriage in America today.

About the Author
Award-winning journalist Michelle Bates Deakin has been writing about personal and social change for two decades. Her work has appeared in many national magazines and newspapers, including The Boston Globe Magazine, UU World, Inc., CommonWealth and Boston Magazine. She lives and works in Arlington, Massachusetts.