Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

From Contract To Status: Collaboration And The Evolution Of Novel Family Relationships, Elizabeth S. Scott, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The past decade has witnessed dramatic changes in public atti- tudes about and legal status for same-sex couples who wish to marry. These changes demonstrate that the legal conception of the family is no longer limited to traditional marriage. They also raise the possibility that other relationships – cohabiting couples and their children, voluntary kin groups, multigenerational groups, and polygamists – might gain legal recognition as families. This Article probes the challenges faced by aspiring families and the means by which they could attain their goal. It builds on the premise that the state remains committed to social-welfare criteria for …

Multidimensional Advocacy As Applied: Marriage Equality And Reproductive Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Talking about marriage equality and reproductive rights advocacy together presents an interesting, and sometimes puzzling, assortment of challenges and opportunities. Both involve efforts to secure legal protections and social recognition that are fundamentally important to those who need them yet also deeply provocative to their opponents. For both, too, advocacy takes place on a shifting terrain shaped by competing views of sexuality, autonomy, equality, personhood, and more.

Yet the two advocacy efforts have experienced very different receptions over time. Just over two decades ago, the Supreme Court expressly affirmed that women have a constitutional right to seek an abortion and …

Equality And Singapore’S First Constitutional Challenges To The Criminalization Of Male Homosexual Conduct, Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In 2013, i Lim Meng Suang and Kenneth Chee Mun-Leon v Attorney-General and Tan Eng Hong v Attorney-General, the High Court of Singapore delivered the first judgments in the jurisdiction considering the constitutionality of section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes acts of gross indecency between two men, whether they occur in public or private. The Court ruled that the provision was not inconsistent with the guarantees of equality before the law and equal protection of the law stated in Article 12(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore. The result was upheld in 2014 by the Court …

The Effect Of Statutory Rape Laws On Teen Birth Rates, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew C. Harding

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers have often been explicit in expanding statutory rape laws to reduce teenage pregnancies and live births by teenage mothers, often with the goal of reducing associated welfare outlays. In this paper, we explore whether expansions in such laws are indeed associated with reductions in teen birth rates. In order to codify statutory-rape-law expansions, we use a national micro-level sample of sexual encounters to simulate the degree to which such encounters generally implicate the relevant laws. By codifying statutory-rape laws in terms of their potential reach into sexual encounters, as opposed to using crude binary treatment variables, this simulation approach …

Regulating Sex Work: Assimilationism, Erotic Exceptionalism And The Challenge Of Intimate Labor, Adrienne D. Davis

Scholarship@WashULaw

Most commentators on sex markets focus on the debate between abolitionists and those who defend and support professional sex work. This paper, instead, looks at debates within the pro-sex work camp, uncovering some unattended tensions and contradictions. It shows that, within this camp, some stress the labor aspect, urging that sex markets perpetuate a “vulnerable population” of workers, similar to others who perform highly risky and/or exploited labor, and should be regulated accordingly. In this view, sex work would be assimilated into other labor. Others, though, take a more anti-regulatory stance. They exceptionalize this form of labor, arguing that because …

Bill 13 (The Accepting Schools Act): Ontario Legislation Mandating Support For Lgbt Students In Publicly-Funded Schools, Renato M. Liboro Jr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Twenty-six key stakeholders from schools in Waterloo Region, Ontario, participated in semi-structured, open-ended interviews for this dissertation. They included students, teachers, school board representatives in administrator and superintendent roles, trustees, and community service providers. This study explored the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth in publicly-funded schools, the effect of those experiences on their mental health and well-being, and the success of strategies, programs, and policies implemented by schools to address LGBT youth issues. It also examined the perspectives of participants on Bill 13, Ontario’s Accepting Schools Act, particularly strengths and weaknesses of the bill in terms …