"Honorable Mention for the 2006 Myers Outstanding Book Award" Ian Ayres is the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is a columnist for Forbes magazine and radio commentator on Marketplace. He is the coauthor of Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small and Pervasive Prejudice? Non-Traditional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination. Jennifer Gerarda Brown is Professor of Law at Quinnipiac University School of Law, and a Visiting Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School.
What can straight people do to support gay rights? How much work or sacrifice must allies take on to do their share? Ian Ayres and Jennifer Brown--law professors, activists, husband and wife--propose practical strategies for helping straight men and women advocate for and with the gay community.
Straightforward advances a thesis that is at once simple and groundbreaking: to make real progress at the central flashpoints of controversy--marriage rights, employment discrimination, gays in the military, exclusion from the Boy Scouts, and religious controversies over homosexuality--straight as well as gay people need to speak up and act for equality. Ayres and Brown take aim at both the hearts and minds of the general public, focusing on strategies that can change the incentives and therefore the behavior of the recalcitrant.
The book is peppered with stories about real people and the decisions they have faced at home, in church, at work, in school, and in politics. It is also filled with creative legal and economic strategies for influencing public and corporate decision-making. For example, Ayres and Brown propose the development of a "fair employment mark" to help companies advertise inclusive employment policies. They also show how a simple pledge to vacation in states that legalize gay marriage can create powerful incentives for legislatures to amend their marriage laws.
Engagingly written and sure to spark debate, Straightforward promises to change the way America thinks about--and participates in--the gay rights movement. "Ayres and Brown approach the subject of advocacy . . . by positing the notion of heterosexual privilege and its concomitant responsibility to make society more inclusive to its gay citizens." "Accessible and consistently engaging, the book is certain to stimulate both casual and classroom discussion. . . . Straght-forward ultimately delivers in its promise to provide a practical guide to action by offering innovative economic and legal tactics for influencing public and corporate policy."---Tony Peregrin, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide "No civil rights movement is ever won solely by those who are the primary targets of discrimination. Gay rights are merely non-gay rights made available to all, and all Americans have a stake in a nation that treats us all fairly. In Straightforward, Jennifer Gerarda Brown and Ian Ayres start the brainstorming on creative ways that non-gay people can raise their majority voices, wield their clout, and do their part to achieve equal rights for all, including their gay loved ones and fellow citizens."-Evan Wolfson, author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry "Straightforward provides an important and much-needed guidebook for enlisting straight Americans to the cause of gay rights. Just as the civil-rights movement of the 1960s called upon blacks and whites to band together to achieve social gains, Ayres and Brown make the case for a new gay-straight alliance as a force for expanding not just gay rights but broad human rights for all Americans."-Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. "Gay people will always constitute a small percentage of the population and therefore our rights will always depend on the support of non-gay people. I wish all that all non-gay people possessed the wisdom that Ian Ayres and Jennifer Brown show here-and now they can. Th
