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Books will be available for purchase & signing
The Exclusive Story of the Couples and Crusaders behind the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monumental Ruling
that Delivered Marriage to all Couples in all 50 States
“LOVE WINS”
The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality
By Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell
Dramatic rights to LOVE WINS have been bought by Fox 2000 for a major feature film, Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, producers (Temple Hill Productions); Chris Weitz, screenwriter.
“LOVE WINS is a real winner, expertly crafted. You can tell it’s going to make a great movie.”—Bob Woodward
“LOVE WINS…is a tender story, inspiring, and ultimately a huge celebration… This book will become a classic.” —Erin Brockovich
“I am recommending LOVE WINS to everyone I know. Rarely does a book of such uncommon beauty come around, one that digs beneath the headlines to its human heart.”—John Grogan, author of Marley & Me and The Longest Trip Home
“Beautifully told and carefully researched, LOVE WINS is a deeply moving insider’s account of the ordinary families who took the fight for marriage equality to the Supreme Court and won…America really does stand for liberty and justice for all.” —Kathleen Parker, Nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist
“Told with a novel’s narrative drive, this recounting of the landmark Supreme Court case… is taut, tense, and highly readable.”—Booklist, starred
“Uplifting, well-written story of personal courage and political empowerment.”—Kirkus
“Full of dialogue and personal anecdotes that it feels as much like a biography as a legal history. . . . Readers will feel they’ve been completely guided into seeing the people behind the cases.” —Publishers Weekly
On June 26, 2015, in a decision that drew headlines around the world, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional right of gay couples to marry in all 50 states after decades of incremental rulings. The historic case, Obergefell v Hodges, began with a simple wish: John Arthur, paralyzed by ALS, wanted to die a married man.
In LOVE WINS: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality (William Morrow; June 14, 2016; $27.99; ISBN: 9780062456083), Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Debbie Cenziper and co-author Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff and now among the most recognized faces in the LGBTQ rights movement, present an intimate, gripping account of the legal precedents and personal hardships behind this unforgettable victory for the gay community. Taking readers inside courtrooms, lives, and hearts, LOVE WINS captures the determination and courage of couples, families, supporters, activists, and attorneys who joined forced to validate the bonds between same-sex partners from coast to coast.
As the one-year anniversary of the decision looms, gay rights activists in states including North Carolina, Kentucky and Mississippi are citing Obergefell in volatile debates about religious exemptions and so-called “bathroom laws,” and Jim Obergefell, once a private man living in Cincinnati, has again found himself center stage, defending the Supreme Court decision that bears his name.
As LOVE WINS recounts, the fight for the right to marry was fueled by tragedy: the impending death of Jim Obergefell’s longtime partner and husband, John Arthur. Though John was dying from ALS, the couple in 2013 flew from their home in Cincinnati to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal, and exchanged vows on an airport tarmac. In his final days, John expressed his longing to die with dignity, rightfully remembered as a married man. But their home state of Ohio would not recognize the marriage, which meant that John would be listed as “unmarried” on his death certificate, with no surviving spouse. Three months before John died, the couple found an ally in Al Gerhardstein, a straight, middle-aged husband, father, and scrappy civil rights lawyer with a record as an unwavering defender of the gay community.
Al, whose youngest brother was gay, had devoted nearly five years without pay in the early 1990’s pushing to overturn an unusual provision in Cincinnati that banned all laws protecting the gay community from discrimination in areas like housing and employment. He lost the case at the Supreme Court, and was so devastated, he nearly shuttered his law practice. But nineteen years later, he found himself drawn back into the fray when he learned about John, Jim and their wedding ceremony in Maryland. In other states, big-name lawyers and national gay rights group were focused on a broader issue: the absolute right to marry in all 50 states. But Al decided to focus on a more tangible, pressing problem: Ohio’s refusal to describe John Arthur as a married man on his death certificate. Al’s legal strategy—and the love story between John and Jim—would help propel the case with unprecedented speed and public support to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court less than two years later.
LOVE WINS reaches beyond Ohio to trace the paths of other Obergefell lawyers and co-plaintiffs in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan, including adopted children who had been denied birth certificates that listed the names of both their gay parents. Readers will get to know a series of people who helped push the case forward, including:
- Federal Judge Tim Black, with his own adopted daughter, who first ruled that Ohio’s marriage recognition ban was unconstitutional. In his landmark decision, he included the words to a folk song that he and his wife recited to their daughter every year, “Happy Adoption Day.”
- Judge Martha “Craig” Daughtrey, on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and among the most powerful female judges in the country, who tried without success to convince her colleagues to rule on the side of marriage equality. “These two men were love,” she pleaded in the robing room of the courthouse right after oral arguments.
- New York City residents Joe Vitale and Rob Talmas, whose two-year-old son, Cooper, was the youngest plaintiff in the case. Since Cooper was adopted in Ohio, which did not recognize same-sex marriage, Joe and Rob were forced to choose only one of their names for Cooper’s birth certificate, deeming the other a legal stranger. Also forced to choose:Greg Bourke and Michael DeLeon of Louisville, fathers of two adopted teenagers, veterinarians Sophy Jesty and Val Tanco of Nashville, with an infant daughter, and Nicole and Pam Yorksmith of northern Kentucky, mothers of two young boys. Pam Yorksmith, in fact, was once nearly turned away from a hospital emergency room with her wheezing infant son because her name wasn’t listed under “mother” on the baby’s birth certificate
- Cincinnati resident David Michener, who couldn’t bury his husband and partner of 20 years because the state of Ohio didn’t recognize Michener as next of kin
- Ohio assistant attorney general Bridget Coontz, who was forced to defend the state’s controversial ban on gay marriage (her bosses were Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine and Governor John Kasich) even though she personally supported same-sex marriage
Throughout, LOVE WINS illustrates Al Gerhardstein’s conviction: Every civil rights case starts with a story. Keeping the tension mounting until the stunning Supreme Court ruling, this riveting narrative will resonate not only with same-sex couples, but every reader who believes in the power of love, the sanctity of marriage, and the constitutional right to fair and equal treatment for all Americans.
LOVE WINS
The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality
By Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell
William Morrow; June 14, 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 9780062456083; $27.99
E-book ISBN: 9780062456090; $21.99
Audio ISBN: 9780062471475; $21.99
Debbie Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist with The Washington Post. Over the past 20 years, she has investigated government fraud, public housing scandals, white-collar crime, and deaths in psychiatric hospitals. Her stories have prompted Congressional investigations, criminal convictions, new laws, and the delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the poor. Debbie has won many major awards in American print journalism, including the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Journalism, given by Ethel Kennedy and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights.
Jim Obergefell is a civil rights activist who embraced his newfound role after the U.S. Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land on June 26, 2015. He has worked with organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign and Equality Ohio and has been honored with awards from organizations such as the Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders (SAGE). Foreign Policy magazine named him one of its 2015 Global Thinkers.
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