Civil Wars: 08/05/06

Civil Wars covers the events that lead to the creation of civil partnerships in Vermont. The book begins with the State's supreme court sending a lawsuit to the legistlature to create a more finely tuned constitutional definition of who can marry whom. The hope of course had been for a straightforward ruling to open marriage up for same-sex couples rather than passing the job onto the legislature but it was a start.

The book provides background information on the couples who were named in the original suit and how they came to joining the suit. Later the book unfortunately becomes more of a book report on the legislative process and it's in these lengthy passages of direct quotes from the floor that the it goes from being an interesting read to a tedious one.

Here's my BookCrossing review:

The writing in Civil Wars is uneven. The first half takes a very personal look at the people who started the law suit that eventually resulted in Vermont creating civil unions. The second half looks at the process itself and reads like a book report with lengthy quotations from the actual proceedings. I ended up skimming these final chapters as they were just too dry.

Although I didn't like the last couple chapters of the book, I still recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of gay rights.

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