While car-crash victim Sharon Kowalski lay comatose in the
hospital, battle lines were drawn between her parents and her
lesbian companion Karen Thompson, initiating a nearly decade-long
struggle over the guardianship of Kowalski. The ensuing litigation
became a rallying point for gays and lesbians frustrated by laws
and social stigmas that treated them as second-class citizens.
Considered the most compelling case of his lifetime by the late Tom
Stoddard, former executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense
Fund, the Kowalski legal saga also resonated deeply among AIDS
patients who worried that they too might be legally deprived of
their partners' care.
A gripping story of love and law, The Sharon Kowalski Case
chronicles one of the true landmarks in the fight for the rights of
same-sex partners, fully framed for the first time within its
social, political, and historical contexts. Drawing on trial
transcripts, medical records, newspaper archives, and personal
interviews, Casey Charles goes well beyond Thompson's own highly
personal account in Why Can't Sharon Kowalski Come Home? In the
process, he brings to life emotions and personalities that
dominated the courtroom dramas and illuminates the highly contested
judgments emerging from supposedly "objective" authorities in
journalism, medicine, and the law.
Charles weaves together various versions of the story to show
how one isolated dispute in Minnesota became part of a larger
national struggle for gay and lesbian rights in an era when the
movement was coming of age both legally and politically. His
account recalls the rough road lesbians and gay men have had to
travel to gain legal recognition, examines how the law is
politicized by the social stigma attached to homosexuality, and
demonstrates how conflicted the decision to "come out" can be for
lesbians and gays who view "the closet" as both prison and
refuge.
For Charles himself--as a gay man with HIV--this story greatly
transcends mere academic interest and necessarily addresses the
broader implications for lesbians and gay men for legal
recognition. His book should be both instructional and
inspirational to all readers concerned with the evolution of civil
liberties--especially for lesbians, gays, and the disabled--in
America today.
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