The Right to be

Parents is the first book to provide a detailed history of how LGBT parents

have turned to the courts to protect and defend their relationships with their

children. Carlos A. Ball chronicles the stories of LGBT parents who, in seeking

to gain legal recognition of and protection for their relationships with their

children, have fundamentally changed how American law defines and regulates

parenthood. To this day, some courts are still not able to look beyond sexual

orientation and gender identity in cases involving LGBT parents and their

children. Yet on the whole, Ball’s stories are of progress and transformation:

as a result of these pioneering LGBT parent litigants, the law is increasingly

recognizing the wide diversity in American familial structures.