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Full-Text Articles in Law
"Trapped" In Sing Sing: Transgendered Prisoners Caught In The Gender Binarism, Darren Rosenblum
"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 …
Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer
Homosexuality As Contagion: From The Well Of Loneliness To The Boy Scouts, Nancy J. Knauer
Nancy J. Knauer
In the political arena, there are currently two central and competing views of homosexuality. Pro-family organizations, working from a contagion model of homosexuality, contend that homosexuality is an immoral, unhealthy, and freely chosen vice. Many pro-gay organizations espouse an identity model of homosexuality under which sexual orientation is an immutable, unchosen, and benign characteristic. Both pro-family and pro-gay organizations believe that to define homosexuality is to control its legal and political status. This sometimes bitter debate regarding the nature of same-sex desire might seem like an exceedingly contemporary development. However, the ex-gay media blitz of 2000 represents only the latest …
A Different Kind Of Sameness: Beyond Formal Equality And Antisubordination Principles In Gay Legal Theory And Constitutional Doctrine, Nancy Levit
Nancy Levit
Gay legal theory is at a crossroads reminiscent of the sameness/difference debate in feminist circles and the integrationist debate in critical race theory. Formal equality theorists take the heterosexual model as the norm and then seek to show that gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals - except for their choice of partners - are just like heterosexuals. Antisubordination theorists attack the heterosexual model itself and seek to show that a society that insists on such a model is unjust. Neither of these strategies is wholly satisfactory. The formal equality model will fail to bring about fundamental reforms as long as sexual …
The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Local Human Rights Ordinances, Robert Salem
The Strengths And Weaknesses Of Local Human Rights Ordinances, Robert Salem
Cleveland State Law Review
This panel will discuss the prospects and perils of local human rights initiatives. Specifically, I will talk about the nature of these local initiatives and their advantages and disadvantages. Time permitting, I will also talk about our successful effort last year in Toledo, Ohio to pass a human rights ordinance that includes sexual orientation as a protected category, and why it is so crucial that lawyers and law professors become involved in these local campaigns. I believe that with determination, most communities can achieve what we did in Toledo. Local human rights ordinances (HROs) take a variety of forms, and …
The Beltway And Beyond: The Struggle For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual And Transgender Equality, Rebecca Isaacs
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
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 …
Legislating Special Rights , Karen Engle
Legislating Special Rights , Karen Engle
Cleveland State Law Review
Is it possible to pursue a queer agenda in promoting and defending gay rights ordinances? My answer is yes, or at least that we need to try to do it. I propose that we pursue a queer agenda by arguing for special rights, not equal rights. Not only does the special rights argument fit with the queer agenda; it also provides our best hope for confronting gay rights opponents. I'll put forth my argument in the following way. First, I'll talk about what a queer sensibility is, and discuss how a call for special rights fits within that sensibility. Second, …
The Baker [Baker V. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999)] Case, Civil Unions, And The Recognition Of Our Common Humanity: An Introduction And A Speculation, David L. Chambers
The Baker [Baker V. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999)] Case, Civil Unions, And The Recognition Of Our Common Humanity: An Introduction And A Speculation, David L. Chambers
Articles
Every. Vermonter seems to know about two recent decisions of the Vermont Supreme Court. In the first, the court struck down the system of local financing of public schools. Like similar decisions in many other states, the school financing case led to a struggle in the legislature and difficulties for legislators at election time. In the second and even more controversial decision, the court reached an outcome that no other state supreme court had ever reached: it held unconstitutional the state's marriage law on the ground that it inappropriately denied the legal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. This decision, …