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Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer Jan 2004

Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This Essay offers a brief analysis of Lawrence v. Texas, arguing that Justice Kennedy's recognition of a liberty interest is preferable to the Equal Protection analysis urged by the Petitioners and advanced by Justice O'Connor. Equality arguments based on orientation and group affiliation in the absence of a core right to sexual autonomy reinforce a view of stable gay identities that is ultimately disingenuous and disempowering. After seventeen years of attempts by pro-gay advocates to bifurcate conduct from status and sidestep Bowers v. Hardwick, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion has conclusively put the sex back into homosexual. Under Equal Protection analysis, …


Tax Protest, A Homosexual, And Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation, Anthony C. Infanti Jan 2004

Tax Protest, A Homosexual, And Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this contribution to a symposium entitled Out of the Closet and Into the Light: The Legal Issues of Sexual Orientation, I recount and then ponder the story of Robert Mueller. Mueller, a gay man, spent more than a decade protesting the discriminatory treatment of gays and lesbians under the Internal Revenue Code. As a result of his tax protest, Mueller was jailed for more than a year, and then was twice pursued by the IRS for taxes and penalties. In pondering Mueller's story, I consider it both as a telling example of the forcible closeting of gay and lesbian …