FREEDOM TO MARRY
an Award-Winning
Gay Marriage Documentary

FREEDOM TO MARRY
Review-5/28/04

Laurie York and Carmen Goodyear have pulled off something quietly earth-shaking with their extraordinary documentary. FREEDOM TO MARRY cuts cleanly through all the murky, distorting layers of misinformation, fear, political propaganda, and willful ignorance purveyed by the anti-gay-marriage crowd, revealing what the fight for same-sex matrimony is really about: reason, justice, human rights, plain common sense, compassion, the next logical step along the road to civilization.

The couples we meet in the film are real, regular people like everyone else. Watching it, we get to know them as humans, not caricatures, and we have no choice but to ask ourselves how we would like to be denied ceremonial affirmation of our love, if that's what we want, and perhaps even more importantly, denied the legal protections and securities which married people take for granted.

Tax breaks, pensions, home ownership, insurance rights, a voice in medical decisions, safeguarding a life you've built with another person--these are the places where many of our fellow citizens are forced to ride in the "back of the bus," for reasons no better than those that kept black people away from white lunch counters, schools and restaurants. This film redefines the "sanctity of marriage."

Eleanor Cooney, Author of DEATH IN SLOW MOTION -- My Mother's Descent Into Alzheimer's (HarperCollins, 2003)

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