Marriage Equality on the Arc of Civil Rights History: A Broad Historical Narrative
28 The Second Draft 7-13 (2015)
60 Pages Posted: 7 Jul 2015 Last revised: 8 Mar 2016
Date Written: July 5, 2015
Abstract
This essay summarizes the thesis of a much longer article, Advocacy for Marriage Equality: The Power of a Broad Historical Narrative During a Transitional Period in Civil Rights, 2015 Mich. St. L. Rev 1249 (2015). Previous civil rights movements in the United States define broad historical patterns that form a narrative helpful to a proper understanding of new controversies. As a society we often could benefit from a reminder that our actions today will form the history for future generations, who will judge us with benefit of hindsight and a broader perspective. With each new civil rights controversy, we owe it to ourselves and to the victims of discrimination to ask whether we are once again in a period of transition, where conventional mores will soon sound as jarring as Justice Bradley’s concurrence in Bradwell v. Illinois sounds to us now.
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