Welcome to Crossroads!

Since 1995, the American Studies Crossroads Project has provided a comprehensive and integrated platform for pedagogical, scholarly, and institutional information for the international American Studies community.

As Crossroads celebrates more than a decade of online innovation and collaboration, the Crossroads team has redesigned the site to better reflect the range of resources and information available to students and educators of American Studies. We hope you enjoy the changes.

2008 ASA Annual Meeting

Back Down to the Crossroads: Integrative American Studies in Theory and Practice
October 16 - 19, 2008
Albuquerque, NM

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Same-Sex Marriage, Human Rights, and the Law

For many same-sex couples, the fight for equality has been a constant; legal marriage has always been at the forefront of this battle for equal rights. In the past year, the increase in media exposure for marriage equality has provoked a variety of responses. Though this visibility has led to an increase in oppositional rhetoric, culminating in the recent passageof same-sex marriage bans in eleven states on November 2, 2004, it has at the very least gotten people to talk about marriage equality.

Regardless of this opposition, marriage has become an option for a limited number of same-sex couples, as a result of actions by the state of Massachusetts, public officials like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and "activist judges" across the country. Though the legality of the court-issued contracts has been challenged and Massachusetts marriage equality is still not equal, many same-sex partners were able to walk into a courthouse for the first time and legally be issued a government document allowing them a human right they perhaps never thought they would obtain. Of course, the significance of these documents is limited, even in states where marriage may be legalized, as they do not allow for the federal benefits that heterosexual families receive when they enter into a marriage contract. In any case, the debate over marriage equality has been forever altered as a result of the events of 2004.