Essential reading for anyone interested in a meticulous narrative of the road to marriage equality. William Eskridge is a better historian recounting the events of the past than he is at offering policy for the road ahead, so this monster of a book plays to his strengths.

If the book has a consistent weakness, it flows from Eskridge's personal belief that while marriage equality for gay men and lesbians should be defended as formal right, it should not have been exercised before the most resistant sections of the population were willing to accept it. He terms this "equality practice," which claims in essence that a right should not be used until it is no longer needed, because no one any longer objects. He is more concerned with the feelings of opponents whose lives would not be changed when same-sex marriage becomes the law, than with the lives of those he believes should wait and suffer, perhaps all their lives under the burden of its denial. He has never expressed any awareness or interest in what such incrementalism inflicts on those who are told to wait until the majority no longer cares enough to object. In his work on the topic, he thought Brown v. Board of Education (esp. Brown II) as wrongly decided, if that gives any indication what he envisions as the correct course here: the law should recognize that segregation is wrong, but not require any actions to correct it because that would make too many white people unhappy.

To be honest, it would be hard to disagree if someone left the book convinced that Eskridge's true sympathies lay with the anti-gay activists. A frequent speaker before the Federalist Society, he here writes more glowingly about the efforts of equality opponents (gay actions are disconnected and unorganized, while those of opponents are uniformly sharp and well-executed). Even though he largely opposes their long term goals, he trips over himself to compliment their work. He has apparently never met an anti-gay activist he doesn't find reasonable and admirable.

One gets the impression that Eskridge believes that unless someone is thing gay persons to the the stake, they are not bigoted. Going through one's ordinary life operating under the background assumption that gays are inferior persons who should be hidden, and deserve whatever opprobrium they encounter as brought upon themselves, is not a prejudicial viewpoint, but only the unquestioned teachings of society and religion. That perspective absolves the actor of any critical judgment for their anti-gay actions, and they should be treated with respect. In my book, at least, such persons are bigots even if the bigotry is so baked into their worldview they don't question it, or even call it deliberately to mind when they react. Implicit bias is still bias, a lesson Eskridge -- who one must admit has no real take in the marriage debate; as a privileged white male who is, as far as I can determine, single -- same-sex marriage was an abstract idea, and thus had none of the passion of urgency or deep need he describes for plaintiffs. That lack of personal interest gives his account, technically accurate though it is, a rather beige tonal palette. Had Obergefell gone the other way, I doubt he would have been overly vexed or emotional, perhaps just planning his next law review article to burnish his reputation, and would probably have gone out to dinner that night with those who had worked to attain that result.

He flashes his close relationship with opponents by referring to them with familiar nicknames (Justice Scalia is "Nino," and Robert George is "Robby"). Worse, he uncritically accepts as his own the analogy that resisting same-sex marriage is the "Maginot Line" in defense of traditional marriage, which places LGBT persons in the role of Nazis. Perhaps relatedly, his penchant to describe persons (mostly males) in somewhat lascivious terms ("Tall, tanned, dimpled, and blessed with a full head of rusty walnut hair," for example) is more than a little creepy.

Playing both sides admittedly allowed him good access to relevant actors, even if it comes with the price of fawning admiration over those whose sole claim to livelihood and status is their dogged determination to discriminate against gay families (Maggie Gallagher, I'm looking at you). Despite the cloying admiration of bigots, the book gets the facts right, and conveys them in an engaging, even exhaustively thorough narrative flow. For that reason, this book is recommended. Readers should, however be wary of all adjectives. A timeline would have also been helpful. ( )