The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick: Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS [Hardcover]

The little-known story of the man who sparked a groundswell of gay activism after a wrongly decided Supreme Court decision. Meticulous research and novelistic?pacing& page-turning portrait of both a man and a moment& This book is an essential reminder of how recently our basic rights hung in the balance  and how easily they could again. [Padgett] is a persistent researcher& A gripping read, the book provides a detailed analysis on the landmark Supreme Court case. 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. Padgett brings Hardwick to vivid life, drawing on extensive interviews with his family and friends to paint a portrait of a kind-hearted artist who never intended to become an activist& A carefully researched, generous biography of a little-known gay rights figure. [Hardwicks] is a story that all should know& A lucid, rightfully indignant study that demands a renewed commitment to equality for all.? Padgett combines incisive legal analysis with vivid evocations of the AIDS-era gay experience& A captivating account of one mans awakening to injustice. As the increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court marches backward in time, all who believe that the arc of the moral universe will ultimately bend toward justice are in desperate need of a narrative as readable and moving as Martin Padgetts A fascinating story, grounded in the complex oppression endured by American queers before the contemporary dynamics of commodification and legalization. Padgetts loving engagement with Hardwicks life reminds us thatdespite stigma and state violencequeer 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. Martin Padgett has heroically res