{"id":1095,"date":"2018-12-31T15:37:54","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1095"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:37:54","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:37:54","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-113","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1095","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>10.15.2017<\/h1>\n

CIVIL RIGHTS<\/p>\n

David Collins,<\/span> with foreword by Evan Wolfson<\/span> and Julian Castro<\/span><\/p>\n

Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

University of North Texas Press<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-5744-1692-3 (also available as an e-book and on Audible), 480 pgs., $29.95<\/p>\n

August 15, 2017<\/p>\n

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the right to marry for all Americans<\/span> in Obergefell v. Hodges,<\/span> after forty years of \u201cstruggle and engagement, combat and persuasion, activism and conversation.\u201d Almost six hundred couples have been plaintiffs in same-sex marriage cases since 1970. In 2013, Mark Phariss and Vic Holmes of Plano, along with Cleopatra DeLeon and Nicole Dimetman of Austin, agreed to become named plaintiffs for a Texas case. Phariss and Holmes were denied a marriage license in Bexar County, and powerhouse international law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, promptly filed suit. (Full disclosure: this reviewer proudly worked for Akin Gump for ten years.)<\/p>\n

Accidental Activists: Mark Phariss, Vic Holmes, and Their Fight for Marriage Equality in Texas<\/span> by David Collins,<\/span> with a foreword by Evan Wolfson,<\/span> founder and president of Freedom to Marry, and Julian Castro,<\/span> former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former mayor of San Antonio, is the newest volume in the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series from the University of North Texas Press. Accidental Activists<\/span> is an important addition to a more complete understanding and appreciation of the history of all Texans.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019s writing is entertaining, employing a literary-nonfiction style that makes Accidental Activists read like a novel. Don\u2019t expect neutrality; Accidental Activists is not journalism. Collins engagingly relates the biographies of \u201creluctant rebels\u201d Phariss, a corporate attorney and human rights activist, and Holmes, a physician\u2019s assistant, professor, and twenty-three-year veteran of the United States Air Force. Collins commands empathy as he tells the story of Mark and Vic\u2019s eighteen-year relationship, a tale of breathtaking prejudice and dumbfounding ignorance, as well as a tale of passionate love, precious kindness, and enduring commitment.<\/p>\n

There are moments in Accidental Activists when the narrative threatens to bog down in legal terminology, quotes from Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s scorching dissents, and repetition, but such is the nature of the law, and proof of Collins\u2019s exhaustive research. A more careful copyedit of this title before its next printing might fix the occasional typo, but one particular instance deserves note, to remedy likely confusion: incorrect citation of 2015 for the United States v. Windsor<\/span> case on page 188 throws off the timeline and sent me scrambling to the index for the correct year, 2013.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Collins\u2019s weaving of national, state, and personal history is quite skillful. His analysis of future challenges involving the chimera of threats to religious freedom, and the \u201cdark comedy\u201d of simultaneous claims to, and abandonment of, the concept of local control, is clear. As noted in the foreword by Wolfson and Castro, Americans need to remain vigilant in the struggle with \u201cbad policies, bad politics, [and] bad politicians,\u201d because, as President Barack Obama warned, and we have witnessed during the last several months, progress isn\u2019t \u201cinevitable \u2026 History doesn\u2019t just travel forward; it can go backwards if we don\u2019t work hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for now, for just a little while, let\u2019s enjoy Accidental Activists. Collins\u2019s exuberant love of Shakespeare is infectious, and through his judicious use of anecdotes\u2014no small number starring the beloved beagles (see photographs)\u2014the personalities of Phariss and Holmes beam from these pages.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}