Between June 2004 and March 2005, I conducted 85 in-depth interviews videotaped in California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, and Oregon as the empirical foundation for America’s Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. These states (or their individual cities and counties) were among the first to offer marriage licenses to lesbian and gay couples. I met with public officials (county clerks, mayors, city council members, city attorneys, and state legislators) who participated directly in such same-sex-union celebrations. I also talked with interest-group representatives on both sides of the marriage controversy, as well as lesbian and gay couples who wed or sought to.
A national backlash emerged at the state level to what occurred in Massachusetts, San Francisco, and Portland. So by 2012, 20 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin) adopted what became known as Super-DOMAs, which prohibited marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, and reciprocal benefits for same-sex pairs. In other words, the only status gay and lesbian couples had there was that of legal strangers. Between 2009 and 2012, I visited Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin to interview same-sex pairs and other interested parties. In all, I conducted 194 conversations across the six jurisdictions, providing the factual basis for America’s War on Same-Sex Couples and Their Families.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University provides online my filmed conversations for both America’s Struggle and America’s War. The Yale data file supplies the full interview series. Prospective viewers may use the URL of https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/5270 or search the University’s website for my name. Moreover, Appendix D of Equal: A Memoir of Gay Rights recommends 50 dialogues through which watchers may begin investigating this online database.
