No one knows for certain how many gay people are in the United States, because “[t]he gay and lesbian population is ‘invisible’” (Riggle and Tadlock 1999: 6). During the 2000 elections, national exit polls indicated that 4 percent of voters self-identified as gay or lesbian. Yet that figure represents only those citizens who were prepared voluntarily to identify themselves as lesbian or gay to pollsters. Social scientists believe there's a large group of Americans who are at various stages of an ongoing process of “coming out” as gay or lesbian. In any event, the 600,000 same-sex households reported by Wolfson above indicate that the population is substantial.

This book chronicles the evolution of the social movement for same-sex marriage in the United States and examines the political controversies surrounding it, particularly during the momentous time that began on November 18, 2003.

That day, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) decided the landmark case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health and declared that the Commonwealth's conferral of civil marriage only on opposite-sex couples violated the Massachusetts constitution's principles of respect for individual autonomy and equality under law.