Forcing the
Spring
begins on election night 2008, when a controversial California ballot initiative
called Proposition 8—which removed the right of gay men and women to
marry—passed alongside Barack Obama’s stunning victory.
Forcing the
Spring
details how a small but determined group of political and media insiders took
the fight for marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court. Gay activists
and Hollywood liberals joined together to enlist attorneys Ted Olson and David
Boies—the opposing counsels on the Supreme Court’s infamous Bush v. Gore ruling—to
bring a controversial legal case against Proposition 8 before the highest court
in the land. Forcing the Spring is the extraordinary ringside account of
this unprecedented effort to shift public opinion and reengineer the political
certainties of an era.
Based
on original interviews and in-depth reportage, this is the work of Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Jo Becker, after she was exclusively embedded with the
plaintiffs’ legal team for more than four years, attending every day of the
trial and every appellate argument. Offering behind-the-scenes coverage on the
Obama administration’s role—with access to all the key players in the Justice
Department and the White House—Becker reveals the true story of how the
president came around to embrace marriage equality and play a surprisingly
critical role in the Supreme Court battle. Following the lawyers in the
chambers, the political operatives in the strategy rooms, and the heroic
couples at the center of this historic lawsuit, Becker weaves together the many
threads of the campaign into an inspirational and eye-opening narrative.
An
exclusive account of a national civil rights struggle, Forcing the Spring carries
readers from the first efforts to stop Proposition 8 and the campaign to
undermine the Defense of Marriage Act all the way to the final suspenseful
moments in the Supreme Court. A multi-angled work of journalism that examines
all sides and all participants of this groundbreaking movement, Forcing the
Spring is the definitive account of the fight to win the rights of marriage
and full citizenship for all.
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