Law Commons^™

Examining Perceived Effects Of Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Among Sexual Minority Women: Identifying Demographic Differences And Factors Related To Alcohol Use Disorder, Depression, And Self-Perceived Health, Laurie A. Drabble, Amy A. Mericle, Cat Munroe, Angie R. Wootton, Karen F. Trocki, Tonda L. Hughes

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Introduction

Reductions in structural stigmas, such as gaining access to legalized same-sex marriage, are associated with positive psychological and physical health outcomes among sexual minorities. However, these positive outcomes may be less robust among sexual minority women (SMW).

Methods

This study examined how perceptions of the impact of legalized same-sex marriage among SMW may (1) differ by demographic characteristics and (2) predict alcohol use disorder, depression, and self-perceived health. A diverse sample of SMW (N=446) completed an online survey in 2020 assessing the perceived impact of legalized same-sex marriage across six social-ecological domains: (1) personal impact, (2) stigma-related …

Measuring The Impact Of Legal Recognition Of Same-Sex Marriage Among Sexual Minority Women, Laurie A. Drabble, Amy A. Mericle, Angie R. Wootton, Cat Munroe, Libo Li, Karen F. Trocki, Tonda Hughes

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Reductions in structural stigma, such as gaining access to legalized same-sex marriage, is associated with positive psychological and physical health outcomes among sexual minority adults. However, these positive outcomes may be less robust among sexual minority women (SMW; e.g., lesbian, bisexual, queer) than sexual minority men and new measures are needed to develop a more nuanced understanding of the impact of affirming policies on the health and well-being of SMW. This study assessed the psychometric properties of measures developed to assess the psychosocial impacts of legalized same-sex marriage on the lives of SMW. Participants (N = 446) completed an online …

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …

Strange Bedfellows: How An Anticipatory Countermovement Brought Same-Sex Marriage Into The Public Arena, Michael C. Dorf, Sidney Tarrow

Michael C. Dorf

Since the 1980s, social movement scholars have investigated the dynamic of movement/countermovement interaction. Most of these studies posit movements as initiators, with countermovements reacting to their challenges. Yet sometimes a movement supports an agenda in response to a countermovement that engages in what we call “anticipatory countermobilization.” We interviewed ten leading LGBT activists to explore the hypothesis that the LGBT movement was brought to the fight for marriage equality by the anticipatory countermobilization of social conservatives who opposed same-sex marriage before there was a realistic prospect that it would be recognized by the courts or political actors. Our findings reinforce …

Doux Commerce, Religion, And The Limits Of Antidiscrimination Law, Nathan B. Oman

Indiana Law Journal

This Article addresses the question of law, religion, and the market directly. It does so by developing three theories of how one might conceptualize the proper relationship between commerce and religion. The first two theories I offer are not meant to be summaries of any position explicitly articulated by any particular thinker. There is a paucity of explicit reflection on the question of markets and reli-gion and virtually no effort to generate broad legal theories of that relationship. Rather, these theories are an attempt to explicitly articulate clusters of intuitions that seem to travel together. My hope is to show …

The Respectable Dignity Of Obergefell V. Hodges, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

In declaring state laws that restrict same-sex marriage unconstitutional, Justice Kennedy invoked “dignity” nine times—to no one’s surprise. References in Obergefell to “dignity” are in important respects the culmination of Justice Kennedy’s elevation of the concept, dating back to the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In Casey, “dignity” expressed respect for a woman’s freedom to make choices about her pregnancy. Casey laid the foundation for Lawrence v. Texas, which similarly respected the freedom of choice of homosexual persons. Yet, starting in United States v. Windsor and continuing in Obergefell, the narrative began to change. Dignity veered …

Same-Sex Marriage And Jewish Law: Time For A New Paradigm?, Doron M. Kalir

Doron M Kalir

In recent years the Supreme Court, as well as important segments of society, has come to accept and even celebrate same-sex relations that in the past, and for some still today, have generated contempt, hostility, and violence. This change in law and culture poses a unique challenge for those who are moved by the plight of gay people yet concomitantly feel bound by their religious convictions and therefore prevented from providing religious legitimacy to people who yearn to be part of their community. Professor Kalir meets this challenge by proposing that the Torah (and Jewish law), read in context, accepts …

Same-Sex Marriage And Jewish Law: Time For A New Paradigm?, Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In recent years the Supreme Court, as well as important segments of society, has come to accept and even celebrate same-sex relations that, in the past, and for some still today, have generated contempt, hostility, and violence. This change in law and culture poses a unique challenge for those who are moved by the plight of gay people yet concomitantly feel bound by their religious convictions and therefore prevented from providing religious legitimacy to people who yearn to be part of their community. Professor Kalir meets this challenge by proposing that the Torah (and Jewish law), read in context, accepts …

Toward A Political Sociology Of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism In South African Marriage Law, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple …

Strange Bedfellows: How An Anticipatory Countermovement Brought Same-Sex Marriage Into The Public Arena, Michael C. Dorf, Sidney Tarrow

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Since the 1980s, social movement scholars have investigated the dynamic of movement/countermovement interaction. Most of these studies posit movements as initiators, with countermovements reacting to their challenges. Yet sometimes a movement supports an agenda in response to a countermovement that engages in what we call “anticipatory countermobilization.” We interviewed ten leading LGBT activists to explore the hypothesis that the LGBT movement was brought to the fight for marriage equality by the anticipatory countermobilization of social conservatives who opposed same-sex marriage before there was a realistic prospect that it would be recognized by the courts or political actors. Our findings reinforce …

Civil Rights 3.0, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is now commonplace to hear the LGBT rights movement being described as the last, or the next, or today’s, pre-eminent civil rights issue. This chapter will explore what that means from several perspectives: What does the label tell us about the civil rights paradigm itself? If the achievement of marriage equality is the great civil rights achievement of this generation, what does that suggest about a future for equality more generally? How have new forms of, and technologies for, movement building affected the idea and practice of civil rights? Does the civil rights paradigm have a future? I focus …

Federalism, Liberty, And Equality In United States V. Windsor, Ernest A. Young, Erin C. Blondel

Faculty Scholarship

This essay argues that federalism played a profoundly important role in the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor, which struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Arguments to the contrary have failed to appreciate how Justice Kennedy's opinion employed federalism not as a freestanding argument but as an essential component of his rights analysis. Far from being a "muddle," as many have claimed, Justice Kennedy's analysis offered one of the most sophisticated examples to date of the interconnections between federalism, liberty, and equality.

Exposing The Traditional Marriage Agenda, Jessica Feinberg

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The success of a social justice movement, especially with regard to issues upon which the public will be voting, depends in significant part on how the issues are defined or framed. Anti-same-sex marriage campaigns frequently urge voters to vote in favor of laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman in order to “protect traditional marriage.” Instead of framing the issue as a question of whether individuals of the same sex should be banned from marrying, anti-same-sex marriage campaigns often frame the issue as a question of whether traditional marriage should be protected from redefinition. This strategy has …

Sexual Politics And Social Change, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

The Article examines the impact of social movement activity upon the advancement of GLBT rights. It analyzes the state and local strategy that GLBT social movements utilized to alter the legal status of sexual orientation and sexuality following the Supreme Court's ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick. Successful advocacy before state and local courts, human rights commissions, and legislatures fundamentally shifted public opinion and laws regarding sexual orientation and sexuality between Bowers and the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. This altered landscape created the ''political opportunity" for the Lawrence ruling and made the opinion relatively "safe. "

Currently, …

Protecting Parent-Child Relationships: Determining Parental Rights Of Same-Sex Parents Consistently Despite Varying Recognition Of Their Relationship, Linda S. Anderson

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The family and parental relationship appears secure as long as the members of the family stay within the borders of the states that recognize their relationship. What happens, though, when the family ventures beyond the borders of Vermont, Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut, has yet to be determined. Legislation in almost every other state has addressed whether each state will recognize the couples’ relationship,27 but no state has determined how it will treat the legal relationship between the children of these couples and their parents.28 This article will focus on the fragile legal relationship between same-sex parents and their children …

Letter From The Executive Director, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Heterosexuality is under attack--not by the authors of a new "I hate straights" broadsheet, not by vacationers in Provincetown, but by state judges in the US. In August, New York's highest court ruled that the New York State Constitution "does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same-sex." Their reasoning? In part, the decision declared, because opposite-sex relationships are "often too casual," and thus result in the production of children by "accident or impulse." And so, "unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in …

The Recognition Of Same-Sex Relationships: Comparative Institutional Analysis, Contested Social Goals, And Strategic Institutional Choice, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The emerging field of comparative institutional analysis (CIA) has much to offer public policy analysts. However, the failure of CIA to address the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated limits the scope of its application to the largely prescriptive pronouncements of legal scholars. By examining the movement for equal recognition of same-sex relationships, this Essay builds on the basic observations of CIA and introduces a new dimension, namely the dynamic process through which social goals are articulated and social change is pursued. The acknowledgment that the production of social goals involves institutional behavior, as well as multiple sites …

Love, Change, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is morality: to include all as human and entitled to the deepest love and care. This is the distillation of everything the author fights for as a feminist, a critical race theorist, and a peace activist. Since we are at war, having sent to date 1,500 U.S. soldiers off to die, speaking against war and for peace is a current imperative. Then comes this invitation to speak as a critical race theorist on the subject of same-sex marriage.

Without marriage you can do everything that counts in marriage except that which requires the imprint of the state. What you …

September 11 Attacks And Surviving Same-Sex Partners: Defining Family Through Tragedy, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The September 11 relief efforts present a unique prism through which to view the status of same-sex relationships and to consider which families count when the United States is supposedly at its most generous, most united, and most injured. On a basic human level, would the nation grieve for Peggy Neff, who lost her partner of 18 years when Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, as it had for the widow of a fire fighter? Would Neff be eligible to file a claim with the multi-billion dollar federal September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which Congress established to compensate victims and …

Out Yet Unseen: A Racial Critique Of Gay And Lesbian Legal Theory And Political Discourse, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

The symbolic meaning of the phrase "tongues untied" has grown to identify a small, yet expanding, cultural, intellectual, and artistic "movement" aimed at revealing - or ending the silence around - the interactions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, what one participant in the movement described as "the transformation of silence into language and action." The work of this movement contrasts starkly with that of the "dominant" gay and lesbian culture and scholarship, where issues of racial and class subordination are neglected or rejected and where a universal gay and lesbian experience is assumed. The work of this movement highlights …