The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick: Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS tells a story about privacy and liberty framed by “the most important gay rights case in history,” the story of the 1986 Supreme Court case of Bowers v. Hardwick. 

But it’s more than a story of the now-infamous case. It’s the long overdue story of the life of Michael Hardwick and his triumph in the face of a conservative notion of justice.

Hardwick, arrested in 1982 for sodomy at a time when half of America had written those laws out of existence, decided to fight for sexual privacy for the queer community and took his battle all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost, in what’s now considered one of the worst decisions ever rendered by the Court, according to its own justices. 

 In the aftermath of the horrific ruling, and after a brief stint as the public face of queer politics, Michael took back both his sexual and his political privacy and rededicated himself to his spirit and his art before his death from complications from AIDS in 1991.

Through Michael’s life, readers will see how cultures create their own underclasses, how punishment exists in the absence of crime, how activism often consumes its own high priests, and how moral undertakings are snuffed out by legal technicalities. It exposes how fragile our experiment in democracy has been and can be, when the rules are bent or broken—or written by culture warriors oblivious to their own era. It is a matter that resonates as deeply today as it did almost forty years ago. 

June 3, 2025 from W. W. Norton: Buy it from Bookshop.org

REVIEWS

Kirkus Reviews: “A lucid, rightfully indignant study that demands a renewed commitment to equality for all.”

Publishers Weekly: “Padgett combines incisive legal analysis with vivid evocations of the AIDS-era gay experience… A captivating account of one man’s awakening to injustice.”

BookPage (starred): “A gifted historian and writer, Martin Padgett is an excellent guide to the case as it moved from state to federal courts in what Hardwick’s attorneys hoped would be a stirring victory for privacy and gay rights.”

Bookpage: “Best history books and biographies so far in 2025”

Booklist: “Padgett brings Hardwick to vivid life . . . This book is a carefully researched, generous biography of a little-known gay rights figure.”

Archive Atlanta podcast: “The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick”

Queerty excerpt: “Another voice from our collective legacy emerges—and it’s a page-turner. . .  In The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick: Sex and the Supreme Court in the Age of AIDS, author and scholar Martin Padgett dives deep into Hardwick’s life, unearthing previously unopened legal archives, speaking with Hardwick’s family.”

Lithub: The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick excerpt

Pride Source Pride Month books roundup: “Martin Padgett’s meticulous research and novelistic pacing turn what could have been a dry legal history into a page-turning portrait of both a man and a moment. . . this book is an essential reminder of how recently our basic rights hung in the balance — and how easily they could again.”

Time: “SCOTUS’ Blow to Trans Rights Is History Repeating Itself”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “How Atlanta became the LGBTQ+ epicenter of the South”


“As the increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court marches backward in time, all who believe that the arc of the moral universe will ultimately bend toward justice are in desperate need of a narrative as readable and moving as Martin Padgett’s The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick. Having argued the landmark constitutional case around which this gripping story pivots, I can say that it is by far the finest account of a personal, political, and legal saga like the one Hardwick’s brave life and premature death embodied.”
― Laurence Tribe

“A fascinating story, grounded in the complex oppression endured by American queers before the contemporary dynamics of commodification and legalization. Padgett’s loving engagement with Hardwick’s life reminds us that―despite stigma and state violence―queer and AIDS history is fundamentally the story of regular people who change the world through the power of personal integrity rooted in the truth of our lives.”
― Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York, 1987–1993

“Martin Padgett has heroically rescued the shooting star of Michael Hardwick’s errant 1980s Supreme Court story and placed it firmly in the constellation of the most urgent queer American histories. Spinning the legacy of anti-sodomy challenges back to this foundational case in the HIV/AIDS crisis, The Many Passions of Michael Hardwick triumphs on both narrative and scholarly registers. Start polishing the awards.”
― Robert W. Fieseler, author of Tinder Box: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

APPEARANCES

June 3: Saint Mark United Methodist Church, Atlanta, 7pm, in conversation with Philip Rafshoon.

June 10: Lost City Bookstore, Washington, D.C., 7pm, in conversation with Miguel Trindade Deramo.

June 11: LGBT Center, New York, in conversation with John Voelcker.

June 16: Provincetown Bookshop, 4pm.

July 31: Hops at the DeKalb History Center, 6:30pm.

August 1: Out On Film, Reel Resistance and “Lonesome Cowboys”—a discussion with Abby Drue

October 8: Atlanta History Center/Margaret Mitchell House.

October 11: Atlanta Pride, Piedmont Park.