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Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS
by Martin Padgett
The little-known story of the man who sparked a groundswell of gay activism with a wrongly decided Supreme Court decision.
When a police officer stood at his bedroom door on August 3, 1982, Michael Hardwick had no idea that he would become an avatar of the gay rights movement. Arrested for sodomy, Hardwick sued for his right to privacy all the way to the Supreme Court, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic spiraled. When he lost, his era-defining case inspired a half-million people to protest against the Court. Today Bowers v. Hardwick continues to reverberate as the rights of privacy underpinning abortion, contraception, and same-sex relationships come under fire.
In this fiercely empathetic blend of biography and history, Martin Padgett tells the story of Hardwick's life―as a child of Stonewall, as an artist, and as one of thousands claimed by the epidemic. The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick reveals the halting shifts of American sexual politics, poses urgent questions about the Supreme Court, and returns to Hardwick some of the humanity stolen from him.
"A gifted historian and writer, Martin Padgett is an excellent guide… Padgett paints a vivid portrait of queer culture in 1980s Atlanta and elsewhere as LGBTQ+ men and women contended with legal peril and the horror of the AIDS epidemic, and grasped the promise of liberation." ―BookPage (starred review)
"A lucid, rightfully indignant study that demands a renewed commitment to equality for all." —Kirkus Reviews
"[A] captivating account of one man's awakening to injustice." —Publishers Weekly
"A fascinating story, grounded in the complex oppression endured by American queers before the contemporary dynamics of commodification and legalization. Padgett's loving engagement with Hardwick's life reminds us that―despite stigma and state violence―queer and AIDS history is fundamentally the story of regular people who change the world through the power of personal integrity rooted in the truth of our lives." ―Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York, 1987–1993
"Martin Padgett has heroically rescued the shooting star of Michael Hardwick's errant 1980s Supreme Court story and placed it firmly in the constellation of the most urgent queer American histories. Spinning the legacy of anti-sodomy challenges back to this foundational case in the HIV/AIDS crisis, The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick triumphs on both narrative and scholarly registers. Start polishing the awards." ―Robert W. Fieseler, author of Tinder Box: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation
This information about The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Martin Padgett is the author of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head. Recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship, his writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Paris Review, and Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Pensacola Beach, Florida.
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