By Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis–
The powerful and gorgeous new book LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality, published late last year to much critical acclaim, will arrive in San Francisco with the West Coast premiere of the accompanying LOVE & PRIDE streaming event (https://bit.ly/46LZ0I0) on Friday, February 27, at The Academy SF.
The debut event, featuring Queer Eye’s Carson Kressley, will include the voices of Jim Obergefell, George and Brad Takei, Judy and Dennis Shepard, and many more from the 100 stories featured in the book. The beautiful LOVE book brings together vivid photographs and compelling stories to make you feel as if you’re right there for each and every twist and turn of the many decades of queer and marriage equality activism that culminated in the 2015 nationwide marriage equality victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.
But the book is far from just a recounting of the past; it speaks to how the queer community can respond to today’s political climate when LGBTIQ+ rights are once again being put to the test. Last year, Oprah Daily heralded LOVE as one of six “books that illuminated a path forward.”
The brainchild of the award-winning queer photographer and author Frankie Frankeny, the book is part of the JustMarried Project’s broader multimedia mission of education, celebration and activism. As the book’s co-author John Casey describes in The Advocate: “LOVE isn’t just a collection of stories. It’s a testament. A reminder. A celebration. A rallying cry.”
By distinctively presenting queer personal stories through images and words, LOVE documents and celebrates our collective history, depicting over seventy years of work by couples, activists, and allies. It reveals how decades of courage and love transcended prejudice, reshaped the law, and captured both the compassion of the courts and the conscience of a nation. The project also invites us to get engaged in queer activism today through its From Fear to Fierce campaign. As Frankeny notes, our stories “hold what those trying to erase us fear most: our community’s long-cultivated power to turn fear into fierce.”
Indeed, the heart of the project is storytelling. Scholars of social movements have documented how personal testimonies and lived experiences become catalysts for broader social change. Social movement researcher Jonathan Christiansen describes: “Through shared stories, activists can build collective identities, helping individuals understand their place within the movement and its broader purpose. Origin stories, in particular, can be strategically crafted to emphasize a movement’s uniqueness while connecting it to historical struggles. Moreover, narratives can aid in addressing setbacks by framing challenges as part of an ongoing journey, thus enhancing resilience among members.”
We couldn’t agree more. Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA), the grassroots organization we helped lead for many years, was dedicated to empowering queer people of all backgrounds to advocate for equality in their own words. MEUSA offered our voices, not only in the court of public opinion, but also to the U.S. Supreme Court itself through its unique friend of the court briefs in the landmark 2013 and 2015 marriage equality cases that made the legal case for marriage equality exclusively through the unmediated personal voices and experiences of diverse LGBTIQ+ Americans.
On the political front, MEUSA collaborated with the late Senator Dianne Feinstein in her 2011 efforts to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by helping her humanize the devastating effects of DOMA’s depriving same-sex couples of over 1,000 critical federal rights and benefits through the personal stories of her constituents. As Feinstein introduced the repeal legislation, she dramatically led off the hearing by sharing the tragic story of discrimination faced by the husband and children of the late UCSF physician Dr. Kevin Mack after he was suddenly killed in a vehicular accident and they were left with no protections as a family under federal law.
One visit to the JustMarried website (https://www.justmarried.us/) reveals how this new multifaceted project offers ways for everyone to get involved, as well as purchase the book. In response to the removal of our stories from libraries, curriculum, museums, and even the national parks, the JustMarried Project’s From Fear to Fierce Campaign invites people to donate (https://bit.ly/46OGcry) to putting LOVE free of charge into libraries, educational institutions, and all LGBTIQ+ community centers from coast to coast.
Although the LOVE book itself includes stories up through 2024, powerful new content is being added by the minute via the website and will be included in future editions of the book as history continues to unfold. In fact, the story of Renée Good, her wife Becca, and their children, as told by Nicki Hangsleben, the founder of Minnesota’s QUEERSPACE Youth Center, was featured at the recent premiere of LOVE & PRIDE in Minneapolis. “One need only look at Renée and Becca Good’s story to see how marriage equality made our love recognizable to the world, allowing both our joy and our grief to be honored—without qualification—by those outside our community,” Frankeny movingly recounts. “Without question, this is what we must protect.”
Please contribute your story (https://bit.ly/4aIb8e6) to this growing, participatory project. These stories will be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming podcast, docuseries, and Substack.
Kickoff events, both online and in-person, are taking place right now. We welcome you to join us (https://bit.ly/3ZJZFpB) at The Academy SF at 6 pm on Friday, February 27, where LOVE & PRIDE will be co-presented by Frameline. We will be joined by Kris Perry & Sandy Stier, Shirley & Jay Mercado, and more in a wonderful celebration of the power of love.
As the JustMarried website says: “LOVE’s power is unstoppable when we refuse to be silenced.” Join us in continuing to raise our voices together.
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for over three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. Their leadership in the grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA contributed to making same-sex marriage legal nationwide in 2015. Today, they continue to educate and advocate for marriage equality and LGBTIQ+ rights worldwide.
6/26 and Beyond
Published on February 21, 2026
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