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Full-Text Articles in Sexuality and the Law
All That Heaven Will Allow: A Statistical Analysis Of The Co-Existence Of Same Sex Marriage And Gay Matrimonial Bans, Deirdre Bowen
All That Heaven Will Allow: A Statistical Analysis Of The Co-Existence Of Same Sex Marriage And Gay Matrimonial Bans, Deirdre Bowen
Faculty Articles
This article offers the first analysis to date of national data evaluating whether defense of marriage acts (mini or super-DOMAs) preserve and stabilize the family. After finding that they do not—just as same sex marriage does not appear to destabilize families—the article analyzes what variables are, in fact, associated with family stability. Specifically, those variables are: families below the poverty line; men and women married three or more times; religiosity; percent conservative versus liberal in a state; disposable income; percent with bachelor’s degree; and median age of first marriage. Next, the article applies the sociological concepts of moral entrepreneurism and …
Under The Cover Of Gay Rights, Dean Spade
Under The Cover Of Gay Rights, Dean Spade
Faculty Articles
The article presents a U.S. Supreme Court case Perry v. Brown wherein the status of marriage is considered as unique and same sex couples are denied of marriage but granted the same rights and responsibilities as married one. It mentions the views of Stephen Reinhardt, a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that a granting rights and responsibilities is not sufficient substitute and mystique of marriage is the central issue related LGBT people.
Laws As Tactics, Dean Spade
Laws As Tactics, Dean Spade
Faculty Articles
This article will look at how trans scholarship and activism have taken up disciplinary critiques of gender, often influenced by Butler, and suggest that further development of critical trans perspectives focused on sites of regularization is needed, for which Butler's work on governmentality can be useful. To start, it describes some of the key concepts from Butler's work that have been taken up in trans politics and briefly reviews the distinctions Foucault offers between sovereignty, discipline and biopolitics. The article then examines some of the ways that trans politics has critiqued disciplinary norms, looking at resistance to the medicalization of …
Documenting Gender, Dean Spade
Documenting Gender, Dean Spade
Faculty Articles
This article analyzes gender reclassification policies, which determine when an administrative agency will record a change to an individual's gender marker. It’s analysis takes place in three policy contexts: placement in gender-segregated facilities, changing gender marker on IDs, state provision of healthcare that prohibit gender discrimination on the record for those seeking care. It looks at the significant variation in these policies across agencies to demonstrate the instability of gender as a category of identity verification. The article also asks whether the assumed usefulness of gender for identity tracking in the variety of state programs reviewed is well-founded, and it …
Documenting Gender, Dean Spade
Documenting Gender, Dean Spade
Faculty Articles
This article provides an analysis of gender reclassification policies - policies that determine when an administrative agency will change an individual's gender marker on its records - in three contexts: policies related to placement in gender-segregated facilities, policies related to changing gender marker on ID, and policies related to the state provision of healthcare that is prohibited based on the gender on record for the person seeking care. The article looks at the significant variation in these policies across agencies to demonstrate the instability of gender as a category of identity verification and to ask whether the assumed usefulness of …
The Parent Trap: Differential Familial Power In Same-Sex Families, Deirdre Bowen
The Parent Trap: Differential Familial Power In Same-Sex Families, Deirdre Bowen
Faculty Articles
Do intact same-sex couples where one member of the couple became pregnant with assisted reproduction or was the primary adopter, and the other member became a parent through second parent adoption, understand the legal protections afforded them? In short the answer is no. An interesting family dynamic arises around those who can claim the true status as parent based on their legal understandings of parenthood and their interactions with the dominant culture. The result of research conducted on this issue indicated that second parent adopters had much less emotional power in the family, but often had more economic power. Even …
Reflections On Complicity, Julie Shapiro
Reflections On Complicity, Julie Shapiro
Faculty Articles
The author of this article participated in the litigation of Andersen v. King County, Washington in which lesbian and gay couples unsuccessfully sought access to marriage. Although part of the plaintiffs' litigation team, she is a feminist anti-assimilationist and as such, is generally opposed to articulating marriage as a priority of the lesbian/gay civil rights movement. Confronted with the undeniable reality that marriage has become the central demand of the lesbian and gay movement, the author explores the tensions and contradictions encountered during the litigation. The article examines how one might critically manifest resistance even while working for an assimilationist …
Check Only One: M/F/Other, Julie Shapiro
Check Only One: M/F/Other, Julie Shapiro
Faculty Articles
In this extremely brief essay, the author questions Lawrence Summers' generalizations about women in science. We live in a world of uncertainty about the boundaries of gender. Transgendered and intersexed individuals challenge us to step away from strict categories of men and women.
Lesbigay Identity As Commodity, David Skover, Kellye Testy
Lesbigay Identity As Commodity, David Skover, Kellye Testy
Faculty Articles
In America's popular culture, LesBiGay identities abound. In its political culture, however, they emerge more tentatively. The commercial and entertainment industries increasingly commodify and celebrate LesBiGay identities. The courts and legislatures generally discount and condemn them. Thus, there is a deep dissonance between the validation of LesBiGay identities in the economic marketplace of items and ideas, and their devaluation in the legal arena of rights and remedies. This piece explores the deep dissonance that exists today between the validation of American LesBiGays in the commercial marketplace and their devaluation in political and legal arenas, and questions the failure of legal …
Confronting The Limits Of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique, Dean Spade, Craig Willse
Confronting The Limits Of Gay Hate Crimes Activism: A Radical Critique, Dean Spade, Craig Willse
Faculty Articles
Questioning the emancipatory potential of hate crimes activism for sexual and gender non-normative people, this paper outlines the limits of criminal justice remedies to problems of gender, race, economic and sexual subordination. The first section considers some of the positive impacts of hate crimes activism, focusing on the benefits of legal "naming" for disenfranchised constituencies seeking political recognition. In the next section the authors outline the political shortcomings and troubling consequences of hate crimes activism. First, they examine how hate crimes activism is situated within a "mainstream gay agenda," a term they use to designate the set of projects prioritized …
Foreword: Re-Orienting Law And Sexuality, Tayyab Mahmud, Ratna Kapur
Foreword: Re-Orienting Law And Sexuality, Tayyab Mahmud, Ratna Kapur
Faculty Articles
This forward to a symposium issue of the law review maps the terrain of legal regulation of sexuality. It locates sexuality within a matrix of power, knowledge, and resistance and the question of regulation of sexuality is approached from the perspective of the sexually marginalized subject -- the sexual subaltern. It briefly reviews the contributions to the symposium and forwards a research agenda about questions of theory and praxis related to the production and regulation of sexual subjects.
A Lesbian-Centered Critique Of Second-Parent Adoptions, Julie Shapiro
A Lesbian-Centered Critique Of Second-Parent Adoptions, Julie Shapiro
Faculty Articles
When lesbian couples start families, one woman often begins with all the legal entitlements of parenthood, either by giving birth or by virtue of adopting a child, while the other woman has no legal rights. She is a non-legal parent. Absent legal rights she suffers many critical disadvantages. Second-parent adoptions have been developed to allow lesbians to create families with two-legal parents. They have been widely hailed as a solution to the problem of the non-legal parent. This article argues, however, that for many women they may actually make matters worse. Because some women can use second-parent adoptions, women who …
De Facto Parents And The Unfulfilled Promise Of The New Ali Principles, Julie Shapiro
De Facto Parents And The Unfulfilled Promise Of The New Ali Principles, Julie Shapiro
Faculty Articles
Alternative families - those that do not fit the classic nuclear family model - have been the focus of legal reform over the last twenty years. The American Law Institute has produced model legislation recognizing de facto parents as holders of some limited rights. To some this is a more flexible regime that would benefit non-nuclear families, in particular lesbian families. This article critiques the ALI draft, demonstrating that its promise is largely illusory.
Nothing And Everything: Race, Romer, And (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual) Rights, Robert S. Chang, Jerome Culp
Nothing And Everything: Race, Romer, And (Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual) Rights, Robert S. Chang, Jerome Culp
Faculty Articles
In this article, Professors Chang and Culp propose that the Supreme Court's decision in Romer v. Evans, viewed by some scholars as a progressive case about gay/lesbian/bisexual rights, has little to do with gay/lesbian/bisexual rights as such. They argue that whatever protection Romer provides to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is provided not because of their sexuality but, rather, despite it. The authors demonstrate their thesis by examining the racial underpinnings of the Court's opinion, which begins with Justice Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and which relies on a specific vision of color-blindness. This submerged racial jurisprudence provides the …
Custody And Conduct: How The Law Fails Lesbian And Gay Parents And Their Children, Julie Shapiro
Custody And Conduct: How The Law Fails Lesbian And Gay Parents And Their Children, Julie Shapiro
Faculty Articles
When parents dispute child custody, courts determine their rights by using a "best interests of the child" analysis. In this context, courts consider a host of factors, including parental sexuality. When considering the suitability of custody for a lesbian or gay parents, most courts employ a nexus test - one that requires a showing of a nexus between parental sexuality and the well-being of the child. A smaller number continue to use a harsher test that disqualifies lesbian and gay parents under a per se rule. This article argues that closer examination reveals that even the apparently more liberal nexus …