Overview

When a police officer stood at his bedroom door on August 3, 1982, Michael Hardwick had no idea that he would become an avatar of the gay rights movement. Arrested for sodomy, Hardwick sued for his right to privacy all the way to the Supreme Court, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic spiraled. When he lost, his era-defining case inspired a half-million people to protest against the Court. Today Bowers v. Hardwick continues to reverberate as the rights of privacy underpinning abortion, contraception, and same-sex relationships come under fire. In this fiercely empathetic blend of biography and history, Martin Padgett tells the story of Hardwick's life-as a child of Stonewall, as an artist, and as one of thousands claimed by the epidemic. The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick reveals the halting shifts of American sexual politics, poses urgent questions about the Supreme Court, and returns to Hardwick some of the humanity stolen from him.

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9781324035411

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Reviews

[Hardwick's] is a story that all should know... A lucid, rightfully indignant study that demands a renewed commitment to equality for all.-- ""Kirkus Reviews"" Padgett combines incisive legal analysis with vivid evocations of the AIDS-era gay experience... A captivating account of one man's awakening to injustice.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" A fascinating story, grounded in the complex oppression endured by American queers before the contemporary dynamics of commodification and legalization. Padgett's loving engagement with Hardwick's life reminds us that--despite stigma and state violence--queer 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.--Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York, 1987-1993 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 Padgett's The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick. Having argued the landmark constitutional case around which this gripping story pivots, I can say that it is by far the finest account of a personal, political, and legal saga like the one Hardwick's brave life and premature death embodied.--Laurence Tribe Martin Padgett has heroically rescued the shooting star of Michael Hardwick's errant 1980s Supreme Court story and placed it firmly in the constellation of the most urgent queer American histories. Spinning the legacy of anti-sodomy challenges back to this foundational case in the HIV/AIDS crisis, The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick triumphs on both narrative and scholarly registers. Start polishing the awards.--Robert W. Fieseler, author of Tinder Box: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

Author Information

Martin Padgett is the author of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head. Recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship, his writing has appeared in the Oxford American, The Paris Review, and Washington Post, among other publications. He lives in Pensacola Beach, Florida.

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