License to Wed: What Legal Marriage Means to Same-Sex Couples

Kimberly D. Richman (University of San Francisco). License to Wed (New York University Press, 2014). 

"This book examines the meanings of marriage for couples in the two first states that extended that right to same-sex couples: California and Massachusetts. The two states provide a compelling contrast: while in California the rights that go with marriage—inheritance, custody, and so forth—had already been granted to couples under the state's domestic partnership law, couples in Massachusetts did not previously have this same set of rights.  And while Massachusetts has offered civil marriage consistently since 2004, Californians have experienced a much more turbulent legal path.  And yet, same-sex couples in both states seek to marry for a variety of interacting, overlapping, and evolving reasons that do not vary significantly by location."
—License to Wed book jacket

Polygamy's Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family and Law

Gillian Calder & Lori G. Beaman (eds.)(University of Victoria, University of Ottawa). Polygamy's Rights and Wrongs (UBC Press, 2014).

"Assumptions about the harmful nature of polygamy have left little room for debate, the monogamy coming to represent a hallmark of advanced societies, and polygamy the immoral alternative. Yet in this volume, eleven scholars ask whether this condemnation is justified by examining, among other perspectives, the lived experiences of polygamous families. In essays that fearlessly face difficult questions of choice, dignity, and love, the authors seek to complicate a conversation that is more often simplified."
—Polygamy's Rights and Wrongs book jacket