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The domestic issue that makes the most noise at this moment in our country's history is the “culture war” over homosexuality. In an article in The New York Times Magazine (Shorto, 2005), it is argued that the question of “gay marriage” is not really about marriage at all, but about regarding homosexuality as a disease that must be fought. The argument is often mounted in terms of spiritual belief. Empirical data, appeals to an empathic understanding of other people's points of view, the expert positions of nationally recognized medical, psychological and educational organizations - in fact any kind of reasoned argument - cannot stand in the face of the certainty of fixed, spiritual belief. The hostility toward those who are unconventional, re-framed as Christian Love by those who work to make sure that lesbian and gay families cannot enjoy the civil rights that straight people do, has become so effective that the issue of gay marriage has been referred to as “the new abortion” (Shorto, 2005, p 37).
Into this tense environment comes this important, necessary book, and one that is filled with tensions of its own. The first tension is expressed in the punning title. Only very recently have same sex couples and families been able to stake a claim for the rights that make up the conventions that heterosexual couples and families take for granted as the unexceptional ground for their lives. Of course, lesbians and gay men have lived in familial structures for as long as the term “homosexual” has been a meaningful descriptor; and before there was such a thing as the “homosexual,” same-sex affectional ties and familial groupings have been a part of human society. Nonetheless, the ways those living in these groupings found to accommodate their exclusion from convention have largely escaped notice and documentation. For lesbians and gay men, the experience of being barred from the conventional facts of life was often both the occasion for a creative accommodation to a hostile