In 1998, 69% of Hawaii residents supported a constitutional amendment that marriage should be reserved only for opposite-sex genders. Today same-sex marriages have about 70% support locally and nationally.
The New Yorker contributor Michael Shaw’s cartoon of 1 March 2004 would have been one candidate. Its arch question, “Gays and lesbians getting married – haven’t they suffered enough?”, seems to encapsulate how an unlikely issue, consistently championed, achieved a broader vision of “gay liberation” than many dreamed could be attained so rapidly.
Thanks to works of scholarship like Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis and The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini, it has become clear that the seemingly impossible is often achievable. With The Engagement, Issenberg adds to such proof that one can write LGBTQ+ history in a way that is engaging, authoritative and impeccably sourced.