Gay Marriage: for Better or for Worse? What We've Learned from the Evidence

Opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States often claim that itwill lead to the downfall of marriage and harm children. Drawing from 16 yearsof data and experience in the region, Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? isthe first book to present empirical evidence about same-sex marriage (in theform of registered partnerships) from the Nordic countries. In doing so, Spedaleand Eskridge find that conservative defense-of-marriage arguments havemisconstrued the situation in Scandinavia, where, the authors argue, theinstitution of marriage may indeed have benefited from laws like the RegisteredPartnership Act. If we look at the proof from abroad, the authors argue, wemust conclude that the sanctioning of gay marriage in the United States wouldneither undermine marriage as an institution, nor harm the wellbeing of ournation's children.

Darren R. Spedale is a corporate attorney at White & Case, LLP in New York City. He spent two years on a Fulbright Fellowship in Denmark researching Scandinavian same-sex partnerships. He received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University, and continues his work on same-sex marriage through his pro bono activities.

William N. Eskridge, Jr. is the John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence at the Yale Law School. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Dynamic Statutory Interpretation and Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. He is currently writing a book on the rise and decline of sodomy law in America.