Law Commons^™

"Trapped" In Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught In The Gender Binarism, Darren Rosenblum

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article first summarizes gender, transgendered identity, and legal issues facing transgendered people to contextualize the lives of transgendered prisoners. Parts II and III explore respectively the placement and treatment issues that complicate the incarceration of the transgendered. Corrections authorities, through indifference or incompetence, foster a shockingly inhumane daily existence for transgendered prisoners. In Part V, I examine the plight of transgendered prisoners through the metaphor of the miners' canary. Transgendered prisoners signal the grave dangers facing all of us in a wide array of social structures, elucidating the apparently intractable problems of gender. This Article simultaneously explores a human …

The First Amendment's Petition Clause As An Alternative Basis For Challenging Voter Initiatives That Burden The Enactment Of Anti-Discrimination Protection For Gays, Lesbians, And Bisexuals, Kevin Francis O'Neill

Cleveland State Law Review

The purpose of my remarks today is to suggest that the First Amendment-specifically, the Petition Clause of the First Amendment provides an alternative basis for vindicating gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights in certain cases. At least in the context of voter initiatives that seek to abolish anti-discrimination protection for sexual orientation, the Petition Clause is a promising alternative to equal protection and substantive due process. My objective here was merely to plant a seed: to identify an alternative basis for vindicating the rights of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals-especially when combatting homophobic voter initiatives like those in Romer and Cincinnati. It's …

The Beltway And Beyond: The Struggle For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual And Transgender Equality, Rebecca Isaacs

Cleveland State Law Review

I will focus primarily on the struggle in the legislative arena in Washington, DC and more importantly, in states and local communities. And I will focus on three key issues for the GLBT community: families; civil rights and the intersection with religious liberty rights; and finally, violence and hate crimes. In summary, the GLBT community is pushing ahead of these and other issues in all 50 states.

Canadian Same Sex Relationship Recognition Struggles And The Contradictory Nature Of Legal Victories, Brenda Cossman

Cleveland State Law Review

I want to pick up on one of the themes running through virtually all of the papers in this symposium-the contradictory nature of law. Legal victories-and defeats-are always fragile, partial and contradictory. The perspective I bring to this theme is a Canadian one, where in the context of gay and lesbian struggles, legal victories now outweigh legal defeats. I will tell a story of these legal victories, which resulted in a much celebrated case in 1999 known as M v. H., in which the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the equality rights of same sex couples, and struck down a …

History Unbecoming, Becoming History, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The last few decades have seen a torrent of legal commentary supporting gay equality and attacking the punishment, failure to protect, and refusal to affirm gay conduct and identity. William Eskridge, a prominent voice in this fin-de-siecle literature, now draws together and expands on his previous work in Gaylaw: Challenging the Apartheid of the Closet. Though far more successful in shaping the uses of the past than in showing the way to the future, the book instructs even where it fails. It augurs a century that could well witness the end of official discrimination against gay individuals, and the relegation …

Revisiting Gay Rights Coalition Of Georgetown Law Center V. Georgetown University A Decade Later: Free Exercise Challenges And The Nondiscrimination Laws Protecting Homosexuals, Matthew J. Parlow

Matthew Parlow