At the beginning of the summer of 2013 same-sex marriage was legal in only ten states and the District of Columbia; in seven more states lawsuits were making their way through the courts. The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, announced at the end of June, appeared to open the door to marriage equality. In Texas, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes, together for sixteen years and deeply in love, wondered why no one had stepped across the threshold to challenge their state’s 2005 constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage—until, that is, despite years of conditioning that had taught them to keep a low profile, despite warnings from family and friends who feared for their safety, they agreed to join a lawsuit being put together by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLD.

    Though surprised at their new and very public role—a February 2014 feature about them in Texas Monthly was titled “The Accidental Activists”—they adapted quickly. Two years later—after tense battles in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas and in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, after sitting through oral arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges—they won the right to marry deep in the heart of Texas.

    But the road they traveled was never easy. Accidental Activists is the deeply moving story of two men who, schooled by cultural messages that being gay would come with heavy costs—the loss of family and friends, threats involving housing and job security, the danger of being beaten, even beaten to death—struggled at first to be true to who they were, struggled later in life to achieve the dignity of which Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke in a series of Supreme Court decisions that recognized the “personhood,” the essential humanity of gays and lesbians. And it is more.

    Around the intimate story of two men in love that lies at its center, Accidental Activists weaves other threads that enrich its fabric, setting what is personal in the context of legal and social history—the battle for gay rights in general and marriage equality in particular—and explaining the complex legal issues and developments surrounding same-sex marriage in layman’s terms.