Mary is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her scholarship seeks to understand the role of identity in social movements and how movement actors interact with the state and the law, with a particular focus on the LGBT movement. She has published numerous articles and is co-editor of three books: Queer Families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State (Columbia University Press, 2001), Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law (NYU Press, 2009), and (Not) The Marrying Kind (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming).