From the Closet to the Courtroom

The advancement of LGBT rights has come about through struggles large and small—on the streets, around kitchen tables, and on the Web. Lawsuits have also played a vital role in propelling the movement forward—and behind every lawsuit is a human story. A landlord in New York seeks to evict a gay man from his home after his partner of ten years dies of AIDS; school officials in Wisconsin look the other way as a gay teenager is repeatedly and viciously harassed by other students; a lesbian couple shows up at a clerk’s office in Hawaii seeking a marriage license. In From the Closet to the Courtroom, law professor Carlos Ball follows the stories behind these crucial lawsuits. Beginning each case narrative at the center, with the litigants, Ball broadens the framework to include society at large, before stepping back to deftly weave in the lawyers’ stories and their arguments. A richly layered and multifaceted account, Ball vividly and accessibly documents how these judicial victories have significantly altered LGBT lives today in ways that were unimaginable only a generation ago.