Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
Lawrence V. Texas: When Profound And Deep Convictions Collide With Liberty Interests, Nancy J. Knauer
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, …
Rebuilding The Closet: Bowers V. Hardwick, Lawrence V. Texas, And The Mismeasure Of Homosexual Historiography, Jody L. Madeira
Rebuilding The Closet: Bowers V. Hardwick, Lawrence V. Texas, And The Mismeasure Of Homosexual Historiography, Jody L. Madeira
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In an effort to engage in such specification, this paper will first address the mischaracterization of history in Bowers, which portrays the historic legal and ecclesiastical penalties of what the Court labels as "homosexual activities" as a continuous, unitary narrative extending from the halls of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian to the legislative assembly rooms of Georgia and Texas. This illusory perspective portrays the criminalization of sodomy (and therefore the identity of homosexuality itself) as an impossible cultural continuum. The impossibility of this continuum lies not only in its implicit assumption that states and other lawmaking entities throughout history shared …
Tax Protest, A Homosexual, And Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation, Anthony C. Infanti
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 …