Listen to this episode on BrooklynWorks.

In this podcast, BLS Professor of Law William D. Araiza discusses the recent California Supreme Court decision in Strauss v. Horton upholding Proposition 8 and its impact on the ongoing debate over same-sex marriage. Throughout the conversation, Prof. Araiza, who recently joined the BLS faculty in January 2009 from Loyola Law School Los Angeles, refers to his October 2008 Review Essay: Four Books on Gay Rights and Same-Sex Marriage where he reviewed four books dealing with the complexities raised in the same-sex marriage debate. Publication in the Journal of the History of Sexuality is expected in 2010. Among the titles of the books included in Prof. Araiza’s review are: 

The Long Arc of Justice: Lesbian and Gay Marriage, Equality, and Rights by Richard D. Mohr (Call #HQ76.3.U5 M643 2005)

 

Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? What We’ve Learned from the Evidence by William N. Eskridge, Jr. & Darren R. Spedale (Call #K699 .E85 2006)

These two books are part of the BLS library collection and are of interest from an argumentation perspective on the topic of same-sex marriage. As the review points out, the 142 page Mohr book is an effort “to engage in a non-academic discussion of the role of gays and lesbians in contemporary American society” while the more substantial 336 page Eskridge book examines “examines the empirical evidence of the effects same-sex union rights have had on Scandinavian nations that pioneered legal status for same-sex unions, starting with Denmark in 1989 and continuing with the rest of Scandinavia through the 1990’s”. To download a copy of Prof. Araiza’s Review Essay: Four Books on Gay Rights and Same-Sex Marriage, see his Selected Works page which has links to his other scholarship.