Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Radical Feminist Harms On Sex Workers, India Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Sex work has long been a site for contesting womanhood, sexuality, race, and patriarchy. Its very existence forces us to examine how we think about two very dirty subjects—money and sex. The radical feminist literature highlights the problems with sex work and often describes it as a form of “human trafficking” and violence against women. This influential philosophy underlies much of the work in human trafficking courts, was evident in a letter signed by several Hollywood starlets in opposition to Amnesty International’s support for decriminalization, and is the premise of several movies and documentaries about “sex slavery.” Radical feminists aim …

The First Queer Right, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Michigan Law Review

A review of Carlos A. Ball, The First Amendment and LGBT Equality: A Contentious History.

Marriage Equality Comes To The Fourth Circuit, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Marriage equality has come to America. Throughout 2014, several federal appellate courts and numerous district court judges across the United States invalidated state constitutional or statutory proscriptions on same-sex marriage. Therefore, it was not surprising that Eastern District of Virginia Judge Arenda Wright Allen held that Virginia’s bans were unconstitutional in February. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed her opinion that July. North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia District Judges rejected these jurisdictions’ prohibitions during autumn, and the Supreme Court approved marriage equality the next year. Because marriage equality in the Fourth Circuit presents …

The Rights Of Marriage: Obergefell, Din, And The Future Of Constitutional Family Law, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 2015 the United States Supreme Court handed down two groundbreaking constitutional family law decisions. One decision became famous overnight Obergefell v. Hodges declared that same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marry. The other, Kerry v. Din, went largely overlooked. That later case concerned not the right to marry but the rights of marriage. In particular, it asked whether a person has a constitutional liberty interest in living with his or her spouse. This case is suddenly of paramount importance: executive orders targeting particular groups of immigrants implicate directly this right to family reunification.

This Article …

Two Wrongs Don't Make It Right: Title Vii, Sexual Orientation, And The Misuse Of Stare Decisis, Kenneth A. Pilgrim

Georgia Law Review

More than thirty years ago, LGBT employees across
the United States sought relief from discrimination
under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, claiming
protection under the statute's guarantee that employers
may not discriminate "because of sex." The federal
Courts of Appeals responded with a unanimous voice.
Title VII does not cover sexual orientation.
That conclusion was neither shocking nor
controversial in the early 1980's, but the Judiciary's
interpretationof Title VII has changed fundamentally in
the decades since. Multiple Supreme Court decisions
and newly recognized theories of sex discriminationhave
called into question the notion that Title VII has nothing
to …

Privacy's Double Standards, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

Where the right to privacy exists, it should be available to all people. If not universally available, then privacy rights should be particularly accessible to marginalized individuals who are subject to greater surveillance and are less able to absorb the social costs of privacy violations. But in practice, there is evidence that people of privilege tend to fare better when they bring privacy tort claims than do non-privileged individuals. This disparity occurs despite doctrine suggesting that those who occupy prominent and public social positions are entitled to diminished privacy tort protections.

This Article unearths disparate outcomes in public disclosure tort …

Social Justice For Sex Trafficked Females And Sex Workers In Jordan, Nora Tawfiq Samoudi (Dekaidek)

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis explores social practices, policies and laws constituting criminal and social justice approaches to providing services and amenities for the sex trafficked females in Jordan. As the discussion of sex trafficked females overlaps with sex workers, this research explores the human rights of both groups who experience different forms of gender-based violence. To understand the protection, care and support that Jordan provides, I interviewed seven service providers offering protection for victims of sex trafficking. Also, I analysed the semiprohibitionist Jordanian Penal Code and the Human Trafficking Legislation that criminalise sex trafficking perpetrators and sex-related actions. This research relies on …

Decriminalization Of Prostitution: The Soros Effect, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article explores the activities of George Soros and his charitable organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF), in advocating for the full decriminalization of the sex trade industry. Research finds that OSF spends only a small amount of money on grass roots “sex worker” groups around the world advocating for full decriminalization, but the foundation awards larger amounts of funds to large human rights groups whose reports and policies have a wider reach. OSF’s rationale for full decriminalization fails to consider violence and coercion in the sex trade industry, misreads research, and does not include research from venues where full decriminalization …

Ermold Files Paperwork To Challenge Davis, The Morehead News

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Ermold Filed His Paperwork With Davis, Raycom Media, The Daily Independent

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Gay Man Denied A Marriage License By Kim Davis Wants To Run Against Her, Benjamin Butterworth

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Who Is David Ermold? Gay Man Enters County Clerk Race After Discrimination, Preeti Maheshwari

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Kim Davis Denied Him A Marriage License. He’S Running To Replace Her., Niraj Chokshi

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Gay Man Denied Marriage License Hopes To Unseat County Clerk, Adam Beam

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Kim Davis Denied His Right To Marry Another Man. Now David Ermold Is Going To Run Against Her., Eli Rosenberg

Media Collection

No abstract provided.

Rectifying The Tilt: Equality Lessons From Religion, Disability, Sexual Orientation, And Transgender, Chai R. Feldblum

Maine Law Review

The joy and the challenge of being located in an academic setting is that I am also able to engage in forays (albeit intermittent forays) into scholarly analysis. Delivering this lecture, and publishing this piece, provides an excellent opportunity for me to engage in such a foray. This piece, then, is a scholarly reflection on my advocacy experiences. My goal is to use my experiences in advocacy as fertile soil from which to create, I hope, a lovely flower of theory and conceptual thought. Before setting out on this endeavor, however, I would like to offer two postulates. There are …

An Essay On The Production Of Youth Prostitution, Libby Alder

Maine Law Review

Youth prostitution is more multidimensional than I think most of us are prone to admit. This essay is designed to raise the profile of some of its less prominent aspects—aspects which are not unknown exactly, but which are underrecognized and generally ignored in the context of legal analysis. The phenomenon of youth prostitution involves some thorny, sometimes confusing, issues, but those issues are eclipsed by an ideology that fails to grapple with the complexity of youth agency and the consequent position of youth in law. The result is that some kids are left inadequately served and others are utterly unknowable. …

Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow

Maine Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination against men because they are men and against women because they are women. This familiar characterization of the Act has been quoted in dozens of sex discrimination cases to support a narrow view of who is protected against sex discrimination in this country. When transsexuals file suit, “[e]mployment discrimination jurisprudence at both the federal and state levels ... captures transsexuals in a discourse of exclusion from social participation. This wide net, using a remarkably refined system of semantic manipulations, snags all claims launched by transsexuals and reveals …

Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing

Maine Law Review

The extent to which foreign corporations as well as their domestic subsidiaries can discriminate against American employees on the basis of sex, age, religion, and national origin in a manner that would be acceptable under their own laws and customs but inimical to American law is currently determined by a muddled jumble of circuit court opinions interpreting a “[w]e express no view” Supreme Court footnote. As a result, American victims of sexual discrimination have much less protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the discriminating actor is a foreign corporation or its domestic subsidiary than …

Lessons For Legalizing Love: A Case Study Of The Naz Foundation's Campaign To Decriminalize Homosexuality In India, Preston G. Johnson

Capstone Collection

In 1860, British colonizers codified Section 377 into the Indian Penal Code. 377 is an anti-sodomy law based on Victorian/Judeo-Christian values which criminalizes homosexuality through judicial interpretation and the manipulation of ambiguous language. On August 15^th, 2017, India celebrated 70 years of independence from British control, yet 377 still exerts oppressive control over the safety and freedom of Indian LGBTQI communities. Defining queerness as perversion has caused LGBTQI individuals to become victims of false accusations, blackmail, harassment, housing and workplace discrimination, familial rejection, forced “conversion therapy”, assault, rape, torture, and even murder because of this power imbalance and …