Law Commons^™

Identity/Time, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

This paper engages the unspoken fourth dimension of intersectionality — time. Using the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) identities as an example, it establishes that identity, as it is lived and experienced, is not only multivalent, but also historically contingent. It then raises a number of points regarding the temporal locality of identity — the influence of time on issues of identity and understanding, its implications for legal interventions, social movement building, and paradigms of progressive change. As the title suggests, the paper asks us to consider the frame of identity over time.

Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

The more I learn about the violence currently plaguing LGBT communities, the more it reminds me of the brutal practice of lynching, which has been the focus my research for the past 15 years. Ultimately, both forms of violence are designed to deny targeted groups recognition as citizens. Relying on my expertise regarding racial violence as well as the data on anti-LGBT attacks collected by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), this essay notes similarities between lynching at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. The piece identifies five parallels: 1) the mundane quality of the …

Gay Talk: Protecting Free Speech For Public School Teachers, Stephen J. Elkind, Peter D. Kauffman

Stephen J Elkind

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held that public employees are not entitled to free speech when speaking “pursuant to their official duties.” In most situations, this strips teachers of First Amendment protection when they discuss controversial subjects, such as homosexuality, with their students. To ensure their classrooms are tolerant and accepting environments for homosexual and questioning youth, teachers need free speech protection against adverse employment action their schools might take. The Garcetti Court, acknowledging that “expression related to academic scholarship and classroom instruction implicates” unique constitutional concerns, explicitly left open whether its decision applied in the education …

Censor, Resist, Repeat A History Of Censorship Of Gay And Lesbian Sexual Representation In Canada, Brenda Cossman

brenda cossman

No abstract provided.

Spelling Out Lgbt: Enumerating Sexual Orientation In Virginia's Anti-Bullying Law, Melissa Wright

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tyrone Garner's Lawrence V. Texas, Marc Spindelman

Michigan Law Review

Dale Carpenter's Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas has been roundly greeted with well-earned praise. After exploring the book's understanding of Lawrence v. Texas as a great civil rights victory for lesbian and gay rights, this Review offers an alternative perspective on the case. Built from facts about the background of the case that the book supplies, and organized in particular around the story that the book tells about Tyrone Garner and his life, this alternative perspective on Lawrence explores and assesses some of what the decision may mean not only for sexual orientation equality but also for …

Revisiting The Meaning Of Marriage: Immigration For Same-Sex Spouses In A Post-Windsor World, Scott Titshaw

Scott Titshaw

When the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of DOMA in United States v. Windsor, it eliminated a categorical barrier to immigration for thousands of LGBT families. Yet Windsor was not an immigration case, and the Court’s opinion did not address at least three resulting immigration questions: What if a same-sex couple legally marries in one jurisdiction but resides in a state that does not recognize the marriage? What if the couple is in a legally-recognized “civil union” or “registered partnership”? Will children born to spouses or registered partners in same-sex couples be recognized as “born in wedlock” for immigration …

Lgbt Issues And Adult Guardianship: A Comparative Perspective, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Guardianship reform has largely overlooked issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, however, present a distinct set of needs and concerns due to certain unique demographic characteristics, the evolving nature of LGBT civil rights, and the stubborn persistence of anti-LGBT bias and prejudice. This chapter explores these LGBT-specific concerns from a comparative perspective and identifies the various ways that seemingly neutral guardianship laws can work to silence LGBT identities and place LGBT families at risk. It concludes that guardianship systems should incorporate safeguards that expressly acknowledge the importance of sexual orientation and …

Bullying Across The Lifecourse: Redefining Boundaries, Responsibility, And Harm, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

Over the last fifteen years, our understanding of bullying has experienced a radical redefinition. In our schools, universities, workplaces, and assisted living facilities, behavior that we once dismissed as “horseplay” or “teasing” has increasingly been labeled as unacceptable and, in some instances, criminal. We seem to have reached one of those societal tipping points where certain behaviors we once took for granted are no longer acceptable. Not that long ago, sexual harassment was simply the cost of being female in the workplace, but the 1980s saw a period of redefinition when sexual harassment was reinterpreted and understood to be a …

'Baton Bullying': Understanding Multi-Aggressor Rotation In Anti-Harassment Cases, Kris Franklin

Articles & Chapters

Schools are increasingly expected to intervene to prevent the sorts of bullying behavior that can interfere with education. If they do so inadequately, as a number of recent cases show, school districts may be held liable under Title IX for their “deliberate indifference” to harassment that effectively prevents the victim from receiving the benefits of public education. In popular imagination, “bullying” usually consists of one aggressor terrorizing one victim, sometimes with the assistance or tacit approval of other students. But least with respect to the many cases of students being targeted because they were, or were perceived to be, gay, …

Marriage Rights And The Good Life: A Sociological Theory Of Marriage And Constitutional Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

This is the first in a series of three Articles investigating the underappreciated role that the social theory of Emile Durkheim plays in the quest for the freedom to marry for gay Americans. To that end, this Article begins the discussion by examining the Durkheimian legal arguments that go unnoticed in equal protection and due process claims against marriage discrimination. This Article challenges two assumptions: first, that the most effective legal argument for marriage rights is a purely liberal one, and second, that the substance and rhetoric of liberal toleration cannot exist symbiotically in the marriage discrimination debate with a …

The Moonscape Of Tax Equality: Windsor And Behyond, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

This essay takes a critical look at the tax fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, which declared section three of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. The essay is important because, while other federal laws will apply to some same-sex couples some of the time, the federal tax laws are a concern for all same-sex couples all of the time. The essay is timely because it addresses the recently issued IRS guidance regarding the tax treatment of same-sex couples.

In this essay, I first describe the path that led to the decision …

The Case For The Federation Of Law Societies Rejecting Trinity Western University's Proposed Law Degree Program, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Should Canada have a law school that discriminates against gays and lesbians? Would the governing bodies of the legal profession in Canada approve a law school that prohibited mixed race sexual intimacy? Should a self-regulating legal profession require that the policies of the institutions that produce this country's next generation of lawyers respect equality and academic freedom? Trinity Western University (TWU), a private Christian school in British Columbia is posed to become Canada’s first Christian law school. Trinity Western discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation in both its hiring and admissions policies. It has also been found to violate …

Outing The Majority: Gay Rights, Public Debate, And Polarization After Doe V. Reed, Marc Allen

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Reed that Washington citizens who signed a petition to eliminate legal rights for LGBT couples did not have a right to keep their names secret. A year later, in ProtectMarriage.com v. Bowen, a district court in California partially relied on Reed to reject a similar request from groups who lobbied for California Proposition 8-a constitutional amendment that overturned the California Supreme Court's landmark 2008 gay marriage decision. These holdings are important to election law, feminist, and first amendment scholars for a number of reasons. First, they flip the traditional …

As A Gay Man, I Will Not Be Lectured On Discrimination By Julia Gillard, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Julia Gillard has had a rough few days. More accurately weeks, well, months. Let’s face it, years. And at the centre of so many of her travails has been debate about her gender. She’s been called a witch, deliberately barren, asked if her partner is gay and been the subject of a “joke” menu where a dish was described, with misogynistic cruelty, in terms of parts of her anatomy.

But for all Gillard’s outrage about the language and attitudes she faces, there’s a rather large elephant siting in her office in The Lodge which she seems to determined to ignore: …

Obama Inauguration Speech: A Historic Moment For Gay And Lesbian Equality, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Much has been made of the fact President Obama became the first president to mention the word gay in an inaugural address.

But the significance lies not in what he said but how he said it.

In declaring, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law” Obama not only declared himself abstractly for “gay rights”, he placed these rights at the heart of the central ideals of the American story.

Obama’s whole speech sprung from his reiteration of the much sung hymn to equality from the Declaration of Independence …