“Wuest, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, is best known for writing in The Nation and The Boston Review, often about the financial forces driving culture war cases to the Supreme Court. Born This Way clarifies and extends some of this writing to explore how LGBTQ+ advocates and activists have, over the last seven decades, wielded science as a tool to advance the cause of civil rights in the courts.”

The Baffler

“Bristling with insight, Born This Way is one of the most important and thought-provoking works of LGBTQ+ scholarship this century. The clearest path to genuine equality, Wuest argues, may not rest on biological claims about the nature of sexuality and gender, but, rather, on claims about the forms of social provision to which everyone is entitled.”

Cary Franklin | University of California, Los Angeles

“Addressing crucial questions that are both timely and timeless, this powerful, persuasive, nuanced book is a conversation-changing account of the sources and consequences of scientific authority in the struggles over LGBTQ+ rights and politics in the United States.”

Dara Strolovitch | Yale University

“A devastatingly smart analysis, Born This Way deftly reveals the political pitfalls of relying too heavily on scientific claims in securing rights and legal protections—and, more fundamentally, that we can never divorce science from politics.”

Katrina Karkazis | Amherst College