David Moats

A Battle for Gay Marriage

Civil Wars

Sarah Sammis

Civil Wars covers the events that lead to the creation of civil partnerships in Vermont. The book begins with the State's supreme court sending a lawsuit to the legistlature to create a more finely tuned constitutional definition of who can marry whom. The hope of course had been for a straightforward ruling to open marriage up for same-sex couples rather than passing the job onto the legislature but it was a start.

The book provides background information on the couples who were named in the original suit and how they came to joining the suit. Later the book unfortunately becomes more of a book report on the legislative process and it's in these lengthy passages of direct quotes from the floor that the it goes from being an interesting read to a tedious one.


 The writing in Civil Wars is uneven. The first half takes a very personal look at the people who started the law suit that eventually resulted in Vermont creating civil unions. The second half looks at the process itself and reads like a book report with lengthy quotations from the actual proceedings. I ended up skimming these final chapters as they were just too dry. 

Although I didn't like the last couple chapters of the book, I still recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of gay rights.

Civil Wars A Battle for Gay Marriage

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