Subject Bibliography in Law: Queer Topics in Legal Scholarship

This is both the story of the 50-year battle for equal rights and deeply personal accounts from high profi le politicians, comedians, actors and others in the public arena. The book features contributions from David Hockney, Stephen Fry, Julian Clary, Matt Lucas, Matthew Parrish, Simon Callow, Will Young, Sir Derek Jacobi, Tom Robinson, Marc Almond, Sir Elton John, Alain Judd, Angela Eagle, Baroness Barker, Dan Gillespie Sells, Evan Davis, Jake Graf, Jason Prince, Jon Savage, Lee Tracy, Lord Browne, Lord Cashman, Lord Paddick, Lord Smith, Manny, Mark Mcadam, Mark Wardell, Mathew Todd, Olly Alexander, Paris Lees, Paul Gambaccini, Peter Tatchell, QBoy, Shon Faye, Stephanie Hirst, Stephen Amos, Steve Blame, The Reverend Andrew Foreshew-Cain, Tris Penna, Yotam Ottolenhgi and Zoe Lyons and more.

In this book, Susan Gluck Mezey examines LGBT policymaking over the last several decades, highlighting advances in LGBT rights as well as formidable challenges that still confront the LGBT community. With an emphasis on courts, she traces developments in the struggles for LGBT rights in the United States and abroad. The chapters focus on employment discrimination, transgender rights, marriage equality, and the ongoing battles over discrimination against same-sex couples and transgender persons in education, employment, and public accommodations. It also adds a global perspective by appraising issues affecting LGBT rights in other parts of the world, discussing claims of discrimination in the Canadian and South African courts as well as in the European Court of Human Rights. Mezey provides a succinct and accessible guide to the debates over sexual orientation and gender identity, evaluating the roles played by state and federal courts, legislatures, and chief executives in formulating and implementing LGBT policy. Suitable as an up-to-date resource for anyone interested in LGBT rights, Beyond Marriage will also help students in upper-level classes focusing on judicial politics, public policymaking, family law, civil rights, gender policy, and minority group politics understand ways forward for the LGBT community in the political realm.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR . The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States-the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium "Full of intimate details, battling personalities, heated court cases, public persuasion."-John Williams, The New York Times On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable. It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution. Over twenty-five years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8 and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched. This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.

In Enticements, an exceptional group of interdisciplinary scholars comes together to contribute to the field of Queer Legal Studies. The essays investigate a wildly proliferating assortment of genders, sexualities, and intimacies, questioning how they have been regulated, criminalized, or privileged by law and other regulatory forces. Enticements expands and expounds on the discipline of queer legal studies. Contributors focus on a wide range of sex/gender regulatory regimes, interrogating the use and abuse of queer history for impact litigation and social change, colonial and postcolonial sex laws otherwise obscured by the modern LGBT paradigm of sexual identity, and the policing of trans and cis men. Moving beyond a focus on LGBT identities, contributors consider limits to reproductive freedom, the Christianization of social justice movements, and the politicization of care within and across Black and feminist studies. Accessible and forward-looking, Enticements consolidates and emboldens queer legal studies as a critical, necessary field for the historical present.

In 1960, consensual sodomy was a crime in every state in America. Fifty-five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the fundamental right to marry. In the span of two generations, American law underwent a dramatic transformation. Though the fight for marriage equality has received a considerable amount of attention from scholars and the media, it was only a small part of the more than half-century struggle for queer family rights. Family Matters uncovers these decades of advocacy, which reshaped the place of same-sex sexuality in American law and society - and ultimately made marriage equality possible. This book, however, is more than a history of queer rights. Marie-Amélie George reveals that national legal change resulted from shifts at the state and local levels, where the central figures were everyday people without legal training. Consequently, she offers a new way of understanding how minority groups were able to secure meaningful legal change.

For readers concerned about LGBTQ rights and the history of U.S. citizenship policies, get the book that Booklist says is "insightful" and "an accessible human story with a happy ending." The January 2018 headline story in the Los Angeles Times was riveting. Andrew from the United States and Elad Dvash-Banks from Israel married in Canada in 2010 when gay couples could not marry in these countries. The couple conceived fraternal twins, Aiden and Ethan, with a Canadian surrogate by means of egg and sperm donation. The two boys were born just four minutes apart. Aiden was conceived with a donated egg and Andrew's sperm cell, and Ethan was conceived with a donated egg (from the same woman) and Elad's sperm cell. Andrew and Elad wished to raise their children in the United States, but when they arrived at the American Consulate in Toronto to apply for citizenship, a staff member fired off a series of "shocking" and humiliating questions, and informed the couple of her authority to require a DNA test to determine each parents' relatedness to each twin--she warned that without these tests neither twin would be granted US citizenship. Andrew and Elad knew which twin each had fathered and had planned on keeping this information confidential. They knew this because DNA analyses had already been performed, but the consulate insisted that these costly tests be repeated using their designated laboratory. Having no alternative, DNA testing was arranged, and results submitted to the consulate. Soon, two envelopes arrived at their home, bearing both welcome and dreaded news: United States citizenship was offered to Aiden, whose father was a US citizen, but not to Ethan, whose father was Israeli. And, thus, their ground-breaking legal journey began. The couple's high-profile lawsuit nearly reached the US Supreme Court, capturing worldwide attention along the way. Nancy Segal brings the story to life through firsthand accounts of each father's life history and analysis of the legal intricacies that threatened to deny US citizenship to one of their twin sons.

In Gay Priori Libby Adler offers a comprehensive critique of mainstream LGBT legal agendas in the United States and a new direction for LGBT law reform. Adler shows how LGBT equal rights discourse drives legal advocates toward a narrow array of reform objectives--namely, same-sex marriage, antidiscrimination protections, and hate crimes statutes. This approach means that many legal issues that greatly impact the lives of the LGBT community's most marginalized members--especially those who are transgender, homeless, underage, or nonwhite--often go unnoticed. Such a narrow focus on equal rights also fixes and flattens LGBT identities, perpetuates the uneven distribution of resources such as safety, housing, health, and wealth, and limits the capacity for advocates to imagine change. To combat these effects, Adler calls for prioritizing the redistribution of resources in ways that focus on addressing low-profile legal conditions such as foster care and other issues that better meet the needs of LGBT people. Such a shift in perspective, Adler contends, will serve to open up a new world of reform possibilities that the law provides for.

Sexual, gender, and physical diversity is a feature of every society, culture, and country in the world. Great strides have been made in advancing equality for all people, including those who identify as LGBTQI+, although there is still much work to be done. Violence, discrimination, stigma and criminalization still affect the lives of millions of LGBTQI+ people around the world.

Analysing the strategies people use to resist, accept and respond to laws that attempt to shape not just their behaviour, but also their identity, this book pursues a critical engagement with legal gender transition. The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) has often been described as a groundbreaking and progressive legal framework for allowing people to legally change their gender. This book seeks to challenge this representation by drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with trans people about the GRA. Theoretically this book uses the concepts of legal consciousness, agency and emotion to highlight the normative underpinnings of the GRA. Overall, the book contends, the GRA does not accurately reflect many trans people's own understanding of their gender identity or their sexuality. It is designed to create subjects that govern their behaviour and self-expression in a way that aligns with a purely binary model of sex/gender and sexuality. Although a deviation from these norms does not incur any direct punishment, it indirectly leads to a denial of rights and legal protections. By reviewing relevant legislation and case law, and through qualitative research, the book establishes how, instead of uncritically accepting or completely rejecting the GRA, trans people enact their singular identities by engaging strategically with law.

This book examines the divergent medical, political and legal constructions of intersex. The authors use empirical data to explore how intersex people are embodied through these frameworks which in turn influence their lived experiences. Through their analysis, the authors reveal the factors that motivate and influence the way in which policy makers and legislators approach the area of intersex rights. They reflect on the limitations of law as the primary vehicle in challenging healthcare's framing of intersex as a 'disorder' in need of fixing. Finally, they offer a more holistic account of intersex justice which is underpinned by psychosocial support and bodily integrity.

This book challenges law's reliance on neurology's brain sex binary. The brain has become the latest candidate in an historical search for a reliable and fixed biological marker of 'true sex' that has permeated every aspect of Western culture, including law. As definitions of the sexed and gendered body have become ever more contentious, the development and dissemination of brain sex theories has come to dominate popular understanding of LGBTI+ identities. But, this book argues, the brain is no more helpful than earlier biological measures in ensuring just outcomes.

Legal design is a rapidly growing field that seeks to improve the legal system's accessibility, usability, and effectiveness through human-centered design methods and principles. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to legal design, covering fundamental concepts, definitions, and theories. Chapters explore the role of legal design in promoting dignity, equity, and justice in the legal system. Contributors present a range of community-driven projects and method-focused case studies that demonstrate the potential of legal design to transform how people experience the law. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in the future of law and the intersection of design and justice.

This book analyses the key issues affecting same-sex families in Ireland and beyond today: marriage; formalised and non-formalised same-sex relationships outside of marriage; parental rights for same-sex couples with donor-conceived or surrogate-born children; and the protections afforded to same-sex families under European human rights law. It critically examines the Irish and Australian citizen-led approaches to achieving marriage equality, which made Ireland and Australia the first and second countries in the world, respectively, to extend the institution of marriage to same-sex couples on foot of a popular vote. It analyses the pragmatic and symbolic effects of civil partnership, which was the premier means of formalising same-sex unions in Ireland. Ireland's hurried 'divorce' from civil partnership in the aftermath of marriage equality is examined in light of evidence from the U.K. indicating that this mode of relationship recognition remains popular with both same-sex and opposite-sex couples in that jurisdiction. The book goes on to consider the legal position of same-sex couples who are parenting children born via assisted reproductive techniques (ARTs) like donor-assisted human reproduction (DAHR) and surrogacy. Finally, it looks at the impact (or lack thereof) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as regards the protection of same-sex relationships, marriage and parental rights for same-sex couples. It does this to determine what is required of Ireland and other states party to the ECHR to comply with European human rights obligations when it comes to legally recognising couples, and parents, of the same sex. Shortlisted for the 2024 SLS Margaret Brazier Prize for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholarship.

This book addresses the 'three moments' in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) asylum seekers' and refugees' efforts to secure protection: The reasons for their flight, the Refugee Status Determination process, and their integration into the host community once they are recognized refugee status. The first part discusses one of the most under-researched areas within the literature devoted to asylum claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity, namely the reasons behind LGBTI persons' flight. It investigates the motives that drive LGBTI persons to leave their countries of origin and seek sanctuary elsewhere, the actors of persecution, and the status quo of LGBTI rights. Accordingly, an intersectional approach is employed so as to offer a comprehensive picture of how a host of factors beyond sexual orientation/gender identity impact this crucial first stage of LGBTI asylum seekers' journey. In turn, the second part explores the challenges that LGBTI asylum seekers face during the RSD process in countries of asylum. It first examines these countries' interpretations and applications of the process in relation to the relevant UNHCR guidelines and questions the challenges including the dominance of Western conceptions and narratives of sexual identity in the asylum procedure, heterogeneous treatment concerning the definition of a particular social group, and the difficulties related to assessing one's sexual orientation within the asylum procedure. It subsequently addresses the reasons for and potential solutions to these challenges. The last part of the book focuses on the integration of LGBTI refugees into the countries of asylum. It first seeks to identify and describe the protection gaps that LGBTI refugees are currently experiencing, before turning to the reasons and potential remedies for them.

This is a practical legal text on LGBTQ2+ issues, the first of its kind in Canada. Sexual orientation and gender identity issues impact almost all areas of legal practice. That said, the impact is most acutely felt in the areas of family, employment, immigration, estates and criminal law. This book is a practical, hands-on treatment of the major ways in which LGBTQ2+ issues arise in various legal contexts and how to effectively navigate those waters to ensure an equitable result.

Celebrations of the "transgender tipping point" in the second decade of the twenty-first century occurred at the same time of heightened debates and anxieties about immigration in the United States. On Transits and Transitions explores what the increased visibility of trans people in the public sphere means for trans migrants and provides a counter-narrative to the dominant discourse that the inclusion of transgender issues in law and policy represents the progression of legal equality for trans communities. Focusing on the intersection of immigration and trans rights, Josephson presents a careful and innovative examination of the processes by which the category of transgender is produced through and incorporated into the key areas of asylum law, marriage and immigration law, and immigration detention policies. Using mobility as a critical lens, On Transits and Transitions captures the insecurity and precarity created by U.S. immigration control and related processes of racialization to show how im/mobility conditions citizenship and national belonging for trans migrants in the United States.

Two LGBTQ affirmative US Supreme Court Rulings occurred in the second decade of the twenty-first century: the 2015 Obergefell ruling in support of same sex marriage, and the 2020 Bostock decision ruling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited by Title VII. In The Politicization of Trans Identity: An Analysis of Backlash, Scapegoating, and Dog-Whistling from Obergefell to Bostock, Loren Cannon critiques the opinions of the court in both cases. Cannon carefully presents the evidence that transgender identity itself has become politicized post Obergefell and provides a thorough consideration of the ramifications of this politicization across the nation, especially in the form of proposed legislation and violence. Cannon argues that the politicization of trans identity can rightfully be understood as a backlash response to the Obergefell decision and increased LGBTQ equality. According to Cannon, aspects of the politicization can be characterized as scapegoating and as dog-whistling. This book offers unique contributions to the understanding of these ideas, including a creative application of Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating. Lastly, Cannon argues that conceptually, virtue signaling needs to be paired with dog-whistling to have the political result that the whistler intends.

Family law is a site of social conflict and the erasure of non-traditional families. This book explores how conservative religious and progressive queer groups can cooperatively work together to expand family law's recognition beyond the traditional state-sponsored family. Various religious groups have shown an interest in promoting alternative family structures. For example, certain Muslim and Mormon communities have advocated for polygamy, thereby aligning with queer groups' interest in overcoming the engrafting of monogamy into state law. Advocacy by North American religious conservatives for reforms in favor of non-conjugal families and against same-sex marriage overlaps with certain queer efforts to legitimize friendships and non-traditional families more generally. This book explores these potential areas of queer and religious political cooperation--including limitations and principled reservations to such cooperation. It then looks at additional future arenas of queer and religious political cooperation going beyond family law.

Traversing a wide range of topics, from trans discrimination and conversion therapy to sadomasochism and abolitionism, this book asks questions about the (im)possibility of freedom and equality for queer communities in the world and the role that different areas of international law have to play in such a pursuit. It considers how queer lives and bodies are rendered legible or illegible to the law through how we define concepts such as ‘gender [identity]’ or ‘private life’. It also reflects on whether legal activism focused on LGBTIQA+ rights can ever reflect the insights of queer theory. The book engages with new issues in international law, such as recent contestation over the meaning of ‘gender’ in international human rights law and international criminal law. It also showcases the diversity of approaches to queering international law that are emerging. While some chapters offer a critique of international law’s violent and exclusionary tendencies, others re-invest in international law as a tool in the struggle for queer liberation by seeking to re-imagine it in queer directions. The questions addressed in this book are wide-ranging and approached differently by the authors. However, all centre on the complex relationship between international law, queer theory, and queer lives and what the future holds for these encounters going forward.

This book contributes to current debates about "queer outsides" and "queer outsiders" that emerge from tensions in legal reforms aimed at improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people in the United Kingdom. LGBTIQ people in the UK have moved from being situated as "outlaws" - through prohibitions on homosexuality or cross-dressing - to respectable "in laws" - through the emerging acceptance of same-sex families and self-identified genders. From the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to the provision of a bureaucratic mechanism to amend legal sex in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, bringing LGBTIQ people "inside" the law has prompted enormous activist and academic commentary on the desirability of inclusion-focused legal and social reforms. Canvassing an array of current socio-legal debates on colonialism, refugee law, legal gender recognition, intersex autonomy and transgender equality, thecontributing authors explore "queer outsiders" who remain beyond the law's reach and outline the ways in which these outsiders might seek to "come within" and/or "stay outside" law. Given its scope, this modern work will appeal to legal scholars, lawyers, and activists with an interest in gender, sex, sexuality, race, migration and human rights law.  

This innovative and thought-provoking Research Handbook explores not only current debates in the area of gender, sexuality and the law but also points the way for future socio-legal research and scholarship. It presents wide-ranging insights and debates from across the globe, including Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Australia, with contributions from leading scholars and activists alongside exciting emergent voices. Chapters address a range of current arguments and issues, providing an enhanced theoretical framework and evolving understanding from a variety of feminist and queer perspectives. Relationship recognition debates and LGBT activism and scholarship are examined and discussed, as well as questions around bodily autonomy, kink identities, pornography and healthcare access rights. Research exploring the lived experiences of people facing challenges such as domestic violence, asylum, femicide and hate crime is also assessed.

This edited collection provides a forum for rigorous analysis of the necessity for both legal and social change with regard to regulation of same-sex relationships and rainbow families, the status of civil partnership as a concept and the lived reality of equality for LGBTQ+ persons. Twenty-eight jurisdictions worldwide have now legalised same-sex marriage and many others some level of civil partnership. In contrast other jurisdictions refuse to recognise or even criminalise same-sex relationships. At a Council of Europe level, there is no requirement for contracting states to legalise same-sex marriage. Whilst the Court of Justice of the European Union now requires contracting states to recognise same-sex marriages for the purpose of free movement and residency rights, unlike the US Supreme Court, it does not require EU Member States to legalise same-sex marriage. Law and Sociology scholars from five key jurisdictions (England and Wales, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the Republic of Ireland) examine the role of the Council of Europe, European Union and further international regimes. A balanced approach between the competing views of critically analytical rights based theorists and queer and feminist theorists interrogates the current international consensus in this fast moving area. The incrementalist theory whilst offering a methodology for future advances continues to be critiqued. All contributions from differing perspectives expose that even for those jurisdictions who have legalised same-sex marriage, still further and continuous work needs to be done. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of human rights, family and marriage law and gender studies.

This Nutshell presents a very timely overview of legal topics relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and the law. Topics covered include: regulation of sexuality, gender identity and expression, parenthood, marriage, United States military, nondiscrimination statutes and ordinances, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and religious freedom. Discussion includes developments at the federal, state and local level. Statutes discussed include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Title IX; the Fair Housing Act; the Affordable Care Act; Don't Ask, Don't Tell; Defense of Marriage Act, as well as some of the anti-LGBT rights measures that have been adopted in various states.

Despite formal equality gains such as LGBTQ workplace protections (Bostock v. Clayton County 2020), heteronormative cultural orders still permeate queer rights discourse. Laura Borchert engages with the cultural-legal construction of sexual minorities in the US and deconstructs naturalized assumptions about the Queer in US law and culture by conducting interdisciplinary wide readings of legal texts. She makes a strong case for utilizing suspect classification to secure queer rights and offers the first distinctively cultural studies perspective on equal protection and sexual orientation by using a queer hermeneutics of law.

In the past few decades, gays and lesbians, along with their families, have become more visible members of Canadian society, enjoying increasing levels of legal recognition. In the area of legal parenthood, however, significant questions remain unanswered. In Transforming Law's Family, Fiona Kelly explores the complex issues encountered by planned lesbian families as they work to define their parental rights, roles, and family structures within the tenets of family law. While Canadian courts recognize lesbian parenthood in some circumstances, a number of issues that are largely unique to planned lesbian families - such as the legal status of known sperm donors and non-biological mothers - persist. Drawing on interviews with lesbian mothers, this groundbreaking book illuminates the changing definitions of family and suggests a model for law reform that would enable the legal recognition of alternative forms of parentage. The first empirical study in Canada to address the legal dimensions of planned lesbian families.

This book maps various national legal responses to gender mobility, including sex and name registration, access to gender modification interventions, and anti-discrimination protection (or lack thereof) and regulations. The importance of the underlying legislation and history is underlined in order to understand the law's functions concerning discrimination, exclusion, and violence, as well as the problematic nature of introducing biology into the regulation of human relations, and using it to justify pain and suffering. The respective chapters also highlight how various governmental authorities, as well as civil society, have been integral in fostering or impeding the welfare of trans persons, from judges and legislators, to medical commissions and law students.  A collective effort of scholars scattered around the globe, this book recognizes the international trend toward self-determination in sex classification and a generous guarantee of rights for individuals expressing diverse gender identities. The book advocates the dissemination of a model for the protection of rights that not only focuses on formal equality, but also addresses the administrative obstacles that trans persons face in their daily lives. In addition, it underscores the importance of courts in either advancing or obstructing the realization of individual rights.