Book Reviews Lunch at Woolworth’s? LBGT America After Marriage Equality Philip Kasinitz 1 A few years ago, shortly after New York legalized same-sex marriage, I ran into my old downstairs neighbor. Since I had last seen her, she and her partner had been among plaintiffs in the court case that challenged New York’s prohibition on same-sex marriage. While they actually lost their case, the mobilization around it had been critical to the movement that led to the passage of the state’s Marriage Equality Act. After the usual “catching up” questions (“How are the kids? What’s happening in the old building?”), I asked, “So, are congratulations in order? When are you guys getting married?” She looked at her shoes for a moment and said, “You know, it’s kind of like the lunch counter sit-ins. I mean, we had to fight for the right. That was really important. But now that we have the right... I mean, lunch at Woolworth’s? Really?” Since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in June 2015, I have thought a lot about that conversation. Few civil rights victories in recent years have come as suddenly or unexpectedly as marriage equality. It is hard to remember that not so long ago, many mainstream lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender (LBGT) activists considered marriage too radical to push for, prefer- ring instead to work for antidiscrimination measures and for legal recognition of “civil unions” and “domestic partnerships.” In many places in the country, even these modest goals seemed like long shots. In 2004, Massachusetts became the only state in the United States to, somewhat halfheartedly, recognize same-sex marriage. Progressives around the country were initially slow to follow its lead. Barack Obama came into office opposed to same-sex marriage. Hillary Clinton, whose hus- band signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, did not come out in favor until 2013. Even Bernie Sanders, one of the few members of Congress to vote against DOMA and a consistent opponent of measures to restrict same-sex mar- riage, did not affirmatively come out in favor of Vermont’s marriage equality law until 2009. Yet in the space of a few short years, same-sex marriage has come to be widely accepted in much of America. Once a notion on the radical fringe of gay politics, announcements of same-sex nuptials now appear weekly in the pages of the staid New York Times. Of course, many conservatives still vociferously oppose such 1 Department of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, 333 5 th Avenue, New York, New York 10016; e-mail: pkasinitz@gc.cuny.edu. Sociological Forum, Vol. 31, No. 4, December 2016 DOI: 10.1111/socf.12305 © 2016 Eastern Sociological Society 1140