Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages. By Patricia Gozemba and Karen Kahn (with photos by Marilyn Humphries). Boston: Beacon Press, 2007. 224 pages. $34.95 (hardcover).

The 2003 decision by The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which declared the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples to be unconstitutional, was a watershed moment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) rights in the United States. When I started this review, only one other state--Connecticut--had equal marriage rights, and another--California--had seen its courts establish those rights, only to have its voters nullify them through a constitutional amendment. But by the time this review went to print, there were five states where same-sex couples could marry, including Vermont and New Hampshire, that had legalized equal marriage rights through the legislative process, and Iowa, the first outside of relatively secular and liberal New England. (A bill legalizing gay marriage had also passed in Maine, but was being challenged by voter referendum to take place in November 2009.)

With each new success, it is increasingly likely that we will forget just...