Good reads: Books for couples and families

Family Pride: What LGBT Families Should Know about Navigating Home, School, and Safety in Their Neighborhoods is a new book by Michael Shelton (Beacon Press). Shelton spoke to families from urban and rural areas to look at how they struggle against homophobia and everyday problems. He looks at how some families live “in the closet’ in hostile areas of the country, a kind of “passing” that has a cost. Trying to be a “perfect” example as an LGBT family also comes with a price, he writes. Shelton also has recommendations relating to parent-child relationships, government benefits access and fostering tolerance and inclusion in communities.

From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, by Michael J. Klarman, explores the landmark cases defining this issue as well as wide-ranging and often unintended consequences. The author predicts that gay marriage is probably inevitable in the U.S. and fairly soon. “However, marriage legislation has also impeded other objectives of the gay-rights movement and comes at significant cost, such as sympathetic Senate candidates losing their bids and state judges having lost their jobs,” according to the book. “The lives of millions of Americans have been impacted by these cases and millions more will be fundamentally changed by how we proceed over the next decade. Every American, on either side of the debate, should know how we came to such a turning point in our history.”

Chicago author and artist Philip D. Luing made a public proposal of marriage to singer/songwriter Charles Stephen Hughes, his domestic companion of nearly 14 years, by publishing a collection of poetry and prose he’s written for Hughes from 1998 to 2012. The book is illustrated with Luing’s paintings. Published by BookBaby.com as an e-book, the collection is entitled Bliss: A Marriage Proposal for Charles Stephen Hughes. The book’s inscription reads “a collection of poetry, prose and paintings that culminates in a marriage proposal, private in nature, but made public here for all to read because the personal is still political.” Luing was an active member of NewTown Writers, Chicago’s oldest LGBT writing group, for almost 20 years. See www.philipdluing.com.