"[The] long history of lesbian and gay legal battles [is] well summarized in Law and the Gay Rights Story, a book that deals with many issues other than the right to marry: the workplace, freedom to serve in the armed forces, freedom from violence, freedom for open gays to teach in public schools."
~Edmund White, New York Review of Books
"The balance of deep treatment of legal issues, vivid event coverage, honest critiques of the movement, and particular attention to the individuals who faced enormous risks fighting for gay rights makes this book an engaging and meaningful read."
~Harvard Law Review
"Legal expert Frank offers a timely look at the history and achievements of the Gay Rights movement. Frank outlines the strategy the movement employed—win the hearts and minds of citizens, persuade lawmakers, and finally vindicate rights in the courtroom—and then follows that strategy as it unfolds, providing valuable context to the sea change that has put the movement's goals within reach. Frank's enlightening book underscores how long and difficult the road has been for gay rights and how much has been gained."
~Publishers Weekly
"Frank skillfully weaves together just enough of the concepts and nuances of the law with lively tales of gays and lesbians emerging from the shadows to make for an engrossing story of how activists asserted their rights in the streets, in the courts, and in legislative lobbies."
~Gay and Lesbian Review
"The book's signal achievement is its accessible and compelling prose. Frank translates legalese into English, and he tells vivid stories that drive home the human cost of antigay discrimination. Moreover, he packs a lot of law, history, and politics into a small package, making his book an excellent primer for undergraduates and laypeople interested in either the gay rights movement or the study of law and society."
~Political Science Quarterly
"Walter Frank does an extraordinary job compressing over forty years of political, social and legal history into concise, elegant, highly readable prose. I thought I already knew this material inside out but I learned an enormous amount reading his book."
~Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters and Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
"This is a great and timely book about a still-evolving highly controversial issue. Frank's perceptive analysis, fluent writing, and engaging voice make Law and the Gay Rights Story irresistible and endlessly instructive."
~Daniel J. Kornstein, author of Kill All the Lawyers?
"Walter Frank discusses the role of law in advancing the gay rights movement, at the same time providing a broad overview of the legal, political, and cultural changes involving gay people over the last fifty years. While covering virtually every important gay rights legal case, Frank also interweaves compelling human stories about the challenges and joys of being gay in America."
~Carlos Ball, author of The Right to Be Parents: LGBT Families and the Transformation of Parenthood
