The most recommended same-sex marriage books

Today, most people marry for love, or at least hope to marry for love. However, the idea of the love match as the preferred form of marriage is a relatively recent development. In Marriage a History, Stephanie Coontz tells the story of marriage’s transformation from an economic arrangement into an emotional one and covers everything from caveman unions to the modern fight for same-sex marriage. The book is filled with colorful examples and amusing anecdotes, such as the story of one aristocratic mother’s dismay when her son actually falls in love with his intended bride (she worries this will hurt her economic bargaining power) yet ultimately, it leaves the reader contemplating the very serious question of what it means to fall in love and whether love has, or should have, anything to do with marriage.

My Goodreads review of this book just says, “Yes yes yes yes yes this is the good stuff,” if you want a sign of my emotional reaction to Our Wives Under the Sea.

This is a gorgeous, compact, spooky, haunting novel about a marriage falling apart, and it came into my life at exactly the right time. Miri’s wife, Leah, is an undersea explorer who vanishes for months under the water without a trace. Finally, she returns—but has all of Leah come back?

I would call this half dark fantasy horror, half contemporary queer literary fiction. Or Mitski meets The Haunting of Hill House. It checked all my boxes, and I whipped through it in two sittings. In other words, “the good stuff.”

I highly recommend this book because it is a great history lesson about the first gay marriage in 1971 when Jack Baker and Michael McConnell struggled to get a marriage license in Minnesota. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the case was dismissed. It wasn’t until 2013, when Minnesota made it legal for gay marriage that Jack and Michael’s marriage was finally publicly acknowledged. Two years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality.

This story resonates with me personally because my husband and I live in Minnesota, where we were married in 2014. 

This is the first book to feature gay grandfathers, an overlooked and under-represented population in the literature. It is based on the author’s actual family experience, which allows the reader to experience the real emotions experienced by the characters. The author carefully takes the reader on a journey that will be relatable to anyone with an LGBTQ+ family member. This is a story that needs to be told and Schanke and Schanke do it beautifully.

Jay, a selfish, self-absorbed screenwriter, reflects on his failings as a lover, husband, and friend on the eve of leaving his wife and children. From the way Jay describes his marriage and his approach to fatherhood, it’s clear he’s more than willing to throw his comfortable life away and damage three innocent people for no other reason than he’s bored, shallow, and desperate to blame his incompetency on those closest to him. What keeps the reader engaged is how painfully funny it all is – Jay’s obliviousness provides ample opportunity for mature audiences to chuckle and shake their heads at every meanspirited quip he makes at his family’s expense. By the end of the book, readers can only feel relief that he’s done them an incredible, and long overdue, service.

This highly readable book allows us to hear from one of the actual parties to a Supreme Court case. Jim Obergefell and his co-author, Debbie Cenziper, invite us into the twined lives of Obergefell and his beloved, John Arthur. 

In 2013 Obergefell and Arthur, who was dying painfully from ALS, flew from their home in Ohio to Maryland, where gay marriage was recognized, to exchange vows. But Ohio refused to acknowledge their marriage and would insist that Arthur’s death certificate must describe him as single. As Arthur lay on his deathbed, he and Obergefell contracted with civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein to pursue the lawsuit that would become Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court held that the states must recognize same-sex marriages. Gerhardstein always insisted that every civil rights case starts with a story. This one could melt a heart of stone.

Bringing together the best elements of Stephen King’s early stories, with a dash of Stranger Things, Christopher Farnsworth’s Reunion is the story of a group of kids who saved the world – and then grew up to pay the price for their mistakes. I loved this beautiful story, and it hit all my sweet spots.

When I first started writing books about single life, I thought my joyful and utterly unapologetic take on it was something fresh and new. Then I discovered Marjorie Hillis’s book–first published in 1936! Full of wit and attitude, it was an instant bestseller and republished in 2008.

Hillis has no patience for people who think a single life is sad, seeing them as hopelessly behind the times. One of the single women described in the book has traveled the world and feels sorry for her married friends tethered to husbands. Hillis feels sorry for the people who have never discovered the joy of being alone, including in bed. Every chapter includes single-at-heart sentiments sure to be treasured.

In this follow-up to Prince and Knight by Daniel Haack, our two heroes fight a dark shadow spread over the kingdom. Their love is tested when the prince saves the knight’s life from beasts and monsters. When they reach the Shadow King, the cause of the darkness,  he sees the love between the prince and knight, which gives him hope for the future. He realizes that it’s okay to love someone of the same gender.

The book has beautiful messages of acceptance, forgiveness, and being proud of your own authentic self. The illustrations are charming, like an animated film.

This book tells an incredible story—not just of a same-sex marriage in the early 19th century, which would be remarkable enough, but also of the extent to which this couple was accepted by their community and family. Cleves found a motherlode of diaries and letters that document their lives together, their ability to earn a living during an era when most women relied on male breadwinners, their mutual love of reading and writing poetry, and the ways they sought to reconcile their love with their religious faith. I can’t emphasize enough how many times I paused to marvel at what Cleves had found in her research, and the care with which she reconstructed the lives of these two women who loved one another.