Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

Congratulations to Andrea L. Johnson, former Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic student.  She is a 2011 Super Lawyers Pro Bono Award Recipient.

Andrea L. Johnson is a third year law student at Columbia Law School in New York. Andrea founded a new Columbia Law School spring break initiative, a pro bono “Care-a-Van,” that brought Columbia Law students to five Wisconsin tribal reservations in order to provide legal services. The students, in partnership with a local organization, hosted wills clinics where they met individually with tribal members to discuss the importance of estate planning and draft wills. In four days, the eleven students drafted 75 wills—more than the host organization could have drafted in a year and a half on its own.

Columbia Law School will not only send another group of students to Wisconsin this spring but will also expand the Care-a-Van projects to two reservations in the Southwest. Moreover, as a result of Johnson’s work in organizing the project, several other law schools in the Midwest and Southwest now plan similar activities.

Johnson’s peers have recognized her unique dedication, energy and talents. One of her peers said, “The Care-A-Van was an intense cultural experience for students who spent hours working one-on-one with grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles who shared stories of how their families have been deeply affected by drug trafficking, alcohol and poverty.” Students worked substantively with federal Indian law and estate law to help clients make sure their families would be cared for. During the trip, Care-A-Van participants identified additional pro bono projects for the Indian tribes on which they will be working throughout the semester.

Johnson’s pro bono work extends beyond her work on tribal reservations. She has done significant pro bono work for the Law School’s Center for Sexuality and Gender Law. She has also worked with Sanctuary for Families’ Battered Immigrant Women’s Project and its Courtroom Advocates Project; Columbia Society for Immigrant & Refugee Rights; and other organizations.

Just published on GSL Online, the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law’s e-journal, Female Genital Cutting: The Pressures of Culture, International Attention, and Domestic Law on the Role of African Women, by Aisha Nicole Davis (JD 2012)

Here’s the abstract:

This essay examines the international scrutiny of female genital cutting (FGC) often referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM), and how international legislation overlooks the women affected by the procedure. It focuses on FGC on the continent of Africa, analyzing the policy and legislation influenced largely by those who are either not African or not female. The essay then looks to domestic legislation, reviewing the laws and current practices in Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Egypt. Finally, the paper illustrates how changes in the practice of FGC come about with longevity more when those directly affected are brought into the discussion.

Congratulations to Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who was honored by the National Museum of Tolerance as a Southern California Freedom’s Sister.  The recognition reflects Crenshaw’s scholarship and contribution to the cause of civil rights in America.

Columbia Law School Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw has been named a Southern California Freedom’s Sister by the Los Angeles–based Museum of Tolerance. Freedom’s Sisters is a traveling exhibition that pays homage to a group of extraordinary African-American women who have been influential in shaping the spirit and substance of civil rights in America.

The Museum of Tolerance bestowed the honor on Crenshaw in recognition of her scholarship and influence, according to Liebe Geft, the museum’s director.

“Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work on social justice and intersectionality is world-renowned,” said Geft. “She is a personal role model, and her work is benefiting so many people. We’re delighted that she accepted the honor.”

Crenshaw is director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, which examines systemic discrimination, or how social structures and related identity categories such as gender, race, and class interact on multiple levels to create social inequality.

The Freedom’s Sisters exhibit has been shown in 11 cities, including Los Angeles, where it ran at the Museum of Tolerance from Sept. 14 to Jan. 18. The Ford Motor Company Fund, which is sponsoring the tour, invites each host museum to select a group of contemporary Freedom’s Sisters who provide leadership and inspiration. Photos and bios of the local contemporary sisters are included in each museum’s exhibit, along with photos and bios of 20 national contemporary and historical civil rights pioneers.

The show’s historical figures include the late civil rights activists Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman, as well as the late Shirley Chisholm, the U.S. representative from New York who was the first black woman elected to Congress. Other contemporary honorees in Southern California include civil rights lawyer Constance Rice, Loyola Law School professor Kimberle West-Faulcon, and Karen Bass, a U.S. Representative for California and former speaker of the California state assembly.

Crenshaw attended a luncheon on Jan. 8 at the Museum of Tolerance that represented the first time the entire Southern California faction of Freedom’s Sisters had a chance to meet and discuss the causes that are important to them. Each honoree was asked what message she would impart to young women as inspiration.

Geft recalled being struck by Crenshaw’s response, which was, “Silence doesn’t purchase freedom.”

Crenshaw has written widely on civil rights; black feminist legal theory; and race, racism, and the law. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as the Harvard Law Review and the Stanford Law Journal, as well as in mainstream news outlets, including Ms. magazine and The Nation.

In the early 1990s, Crenshaw served on the legal team representing Anita Hill, and in 1996, she co-founded the African American Policy Forum, which seeks to highlight the centrality of gender in racial justice discourse. In 2001, she authored the background paper on Race and Gender Discrimination for the United Nation’s World Conference against Racism, and served as the rapporteur for the Expert Group on Race and Gender. She has also held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Latin America.

The Freedom’s Sisters exhibit was created by Cincinnati Museum Center and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Its next stop is the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York City. That show, incorporating its own contemporary Freedom’s Sisters, will open to the public on Feb. 4 and run through April 22.

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom. Originally posted on The New Civil Rights Movement:

In 2011, the world witnessed the heinous murder of David Kato, a Ugandan gay activist who was bludgeoned to death in January, setting a sober tone for the year, the Obama Administration launched a new foreign policy LGBT human rights initiative, delivered by Hillary Clinton in a soaring speech in Geneva in December, and the UN finally emerged with formal support of LGBT rights, but the threat of violence remains a daily reality for our gay fellow citizens around the globe:

1. The Murder of David Kato, Ugandan Gay Activist and Growing Demonization of LGBT Persons on the African Continent

Ugandan gay activist David Kato was murdered on January 26th, in a hideous manner that can only be described as rage filled, carried out by someone who repeatedly pummeled his body by using a steel hammer, which in its completion, speaks more troubling of America’s extremist Christian right-​wing religious groups toward gays who have exported an anti-​gay agenda to the country in 2009, than of the attitudes of the Ugandan people themselves. Val Kalende, a lesbian activist and board chair of Freedom and Roam Uganda, an organization that fights violence against LGBT people in Uganda, issued a statement about Kato’s murder, asserting that “David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. Evangelicals in 2009.”

Uganda has captured global attention in recent years for the government’s ongoing efforts to legalize state sponsored executions of LGBT people, albeit unsuccessful to date. David Bahati, a leading Ugandan member of parliament, noteworthy for his homophobic filled brand of extremism as evidenced in his continuous efforts to advance the “gay” capital punishment legislation since 2009 (Bahati has been advised by the US-​based “C Street” ministries), no doubt created an even more hostile environment toward homosexuals in Uganda.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement on January 27th, calling for Ugandan authorities “to quickly and thoroughly investigate and prosecute those responsible for this heinous act.” President Obama released a statement stating, “David showed tremendous courage in speaking out against hate. He was a powerful advocate for fairness and freedom. The United States mourns his murder, and we recommit ourselves to David’s work.”

State Generated Violence Against LGBT Persons on African Continent

The increasingly xenophobic, anti-gay, demonization of LGBT people on the African continent has been accompanied by deadly and violent consequences that is present in a majority of countries on the continent, of which Uganda, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan and Zimbabwe(not an exhaustive list) are among the worst.

Officials in these countries have spoken out against LGBT people; legislatures have taken steps to criminalize gay behavior; and churches, many influenced by American missionaries, have preached intolerance, resulting in hate crimes exacted upon gays, that includes horrific “corrective rape” of lesbians in South Africa, now a matter discussed in the UN Human Rights Council. Even South Sudan, the newest country in the world, recently established in July, is led by a president who has said that “South Sudan was no place for gays and they would never be accepted…“It is not in our character […] it is not there and if anybody wants to import it to Sudan […] it will always be condemned by everybody.” The State Department has its work cut out for itself.

2. The Obama Administration’s LGBT Human Rights Foreign Policy Initiative

“Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, as she delivered an historic foreign policy speech outlining the Obama Administration’s formal policy on LGBT human rights from the Palais des Nations Hall in Geneva on December 6, marking a memorable International Human Rights Day, to rousing applause.

Clinton was repeating her “gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights,” theme, which she initially delivered at the State Department’s LGBT Pride event in 2010. The White House released a National Security Council Memorandum concurrently, outlining a presidential directive on authority and a mandate for federal government agencies who will be responsible for extending protections to LGBT persons abroad via a number of agencies, including Immigration and Homeland Security. For LGBT Americans it had been a week of joy and gratification for the memorial text delivered by Clinton, but mixed with regret that a similar strategic policy approach has not been engaged at home.

Mark Bromley, chair of the Council on Global Equality told The New Civil Rights Movement that Secretary Clinton wanted to give this speech for LGBT human rights and had been looking for the right venue and the right timing. Bromley said that “we [the Council] were happy to see the White House strongly back her decision.” Bromley was present in Geneva when Clinton gave the historic speech, which he said was delivered “pitch perfect” and defined it as a “legacy speech.” The Council flew in 14 international LGBT activists, who also attended the speech. The video of Secretary Clinton’s speech was produced by the State Department.

3. UN Human Rights Council Adopts Pro-​Gay Rights Resolution Affirming LGBT Human Rights

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted an historic resolution on June 17th, the first exclusively LGBT affirmative resolution in UN history that seeks to apply human rights principles and protections based upon on sexual orientation and gender identity. The formal resolution also commissions the first UN official report on the state of LGBT human rights, which is to be directed by Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The resolution was carried with 23 states supporting, disproportionately represented by the Americas, European states and a few Asian countries, led by South Africa and Brazil. A majority of countries opposing represented African and Arab countries, including Uganda and Iran. The Human Rights Council historic vote explicitly embraces concerns about violence and terror carried out against LGBT persons and reflects a decidedly different attunement to these crimes and concerns, in contrast to the vote carried out by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee in November 2010 that initially stripped out “sexual orientation” from a resolution addressing extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in a vote that was overwhelming represented by a majority of African, Middle East and Caribbean nations – although reversed after a globalized uproar of condemnation led by activists and governments alike, when the vote was held in December 2010 on final passage.

4. UN Human Rights Council Issues First Report on LGBTQ Human Rights

The first formal United Nations report on the state of LGBT human rights was presented to the UN General Assembly on December 16 by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, who has been an outspoken supporter of LGBT human rights. In issuing the report, Pillay called on UN member states to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and prosecute all serious violations, repeal discriminatory laws, and end legal discrimination for all LGBT persons. “On the basis of the information presented (in this report), a pattern of human rights violations emerges that demands a response,” Pillay said, according to a report by the AP.

“Governments and inter-​governmental bodies have often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said. The findings of the report indicate that LGBT people face widespread discrimination everywhere in the world and are subjected to extreme violence, including rape, beatings and torture, evidenced by confirmed reports of mutilation and castration that were characterized by a “high degree of cruelty,” including forcible rape of lesbians, a notorious activity by anti-​gay men in South Africa. LGBT persons face criminal punishment in 76 countries and risk capital punishment in five countries, including Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. The report lays out evidence of widespread discrimination and arbitrary arrests and criminal punishment based upon sexual orientation and gender identity.

5. Obama Issues Proclamation Prohibiting Entry of Persons to the United States Who Target LGBT Persons

President Obama issued an executive proclamation (and fact sheet) on August 4 that prohibits persons who have engaged in egregious human rights abuses and who also target LGBT persons from entering the United States. Sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the directive, thus preventing politicians like Ugandan parliamentarian David Bahati from entering the United States. The White House statement calls for entry to be barred to anyone who “planned, ordered, assisted, aided and abetted, committed or otherwise participated in … widespread or systematic violence against any civilian population based in whole or in part on … sexual orientation or gender identity, or who attempted or conspired to do so.” Another first by the Obama Administration.

6. Gay Pride Parades Disrupted in Russia, The Balkans, Speech Suppressed

Gay Pride in Moscow, disrupted again in May by police, has never successfully staged a gay pride march since attempts began in 2006. This year’s parade, cut short, was attended by American gay activist Dan Choi and by Nikola Alekeyev, a now former Russian gay activist, who were both arrested, among three dozen others. Since then, legislative efforts banning pro-​gay speech have advanced in the St. Petersburg City Council through two readings and have been endorsed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party.

Many Kremlin watchers agree that Vladimir Putin’s efforts to return to power as president, has all the hallmarks of desperation, perhaps attributable to a substantial drop in support from his traditional base of voters as his approval rating sank 13 points since 2010 from a high 80 percent to 67 percent reported in a recent opinion survey. It remains unclear if the Duma, the upper house of the national parliament, will take up this measure for consideration. Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993, but homophobia remains highly virulent and authorities have ignored rulings by the EU Court for Human Rights, who ruled against the Russian government last year for failure to respect freedom of speech.

7. Balkan Gay Prides Fraught With Violence and Suppression of Free Speech

In the Balkans, Gay Pride in Belgrade was canceled again in 2011 by officials of the Serbian government, who said they were taking this action to “prevent major chaos” and “to protect LGBT marchers.” Gay Pride in Belgrade has only been held twice since 2001, and violence or the threat of violence have disrupted other attempts to stage Pride.

Members of the EU parliament have condemned the decisions of the Serbian government and EU officials said the failure to respect rule of law and facilitate freedom of expression will be noted with respect to Serbia’s EU member candidacy which has been pushed into 2012. Several Serbian journalists estimated that politics and the upcoming elections were the calculations behind canceling gay pride, according to a report by B-​92 News in Serbia:

“This year the authorities decided it was more profitable to let the U.S. embassy and Brussels get angry, but to avoid irritating that majority,” said Ljiljana Smajlović, head of the Association of Journalists of Serbia.

Split, Croatia gay pride in June was marred by homophobic spectators, estimated at 8,000 to 10,000, in opposition to about 200 marchers. The virulently anti-​gay protestors, who came prepared to disrupt the first gay event in the notorious nationalist right-​wing stronghold of the 1,700-year old city, threw fists, firecrackers, bottles and rocks, some wielded cigarette lighters, while others threw tomatoes and tear gas. Nonetheless, Gay Pride in Zagreb was successfully staged and organizers met with President Josip Osipovic, who offered his support and officially met with organizers. Afterwards, the government released photographs of the meeting.

8. OSCE Engaged on the Issue of LGBT Human Rights, U.S. Envoy hosts Eastern European LGBT Human Rights Defenders

Ambassador David Johnson, head of the U.S. delegation that attended the Organization for Security and Co-​operation in Europe’s annual ‘Human Dimension’ Implementation meeting in Warsaw in early October, hosted a reception for LGBT human rights defenders who continue to face fierce and frequent violent opposition to gay pride events around Europe, most recently in Belgrade on October 2 when Serbian government officials canceled a planned pride march due to ultra-​nationalistic opposition that threatened violence.

Mark Bromley, chair of the Council for Global Equality, who also attended the meeting, said in a statement to the New Civil Rights Movement that the U.S. government’s role has proven to be a constructive one, although the 56-​member state organization has yet to formalize a systematic review of LGBT human rights in the OSCE region: “The U.S. government is now working closely with many EU colleagues to raise LGBT concerns in the discussion, even if it is not formally on the agenda. Ambassador Johnson raised LGBT human rights issues several times during the meeting.”

Apparently, this advocacy has begun to reap benefits as the OSCE Mission to Serbia has funded a case study on violence against LGBT persons in the country – a first for the Mission, which supports civil society stakeholders in advancing democratization, rule of law and human rights.

9. Human Rights Honors Bestowed on Ugandan LGBTQ Activists

Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), was awarded the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on November 11th in a ceremony held in Washington, D.C. It marks the first time that the RFK Foundation awarded its prestigious human rights prize to a gay activist. On November 6th Mugisha also accepted the Rafto Prize on behalf of SMUG in a ceremony held in Bergen, Norway. The Rafto Prize noted that it was awarded to “SMUG for its work to make fundamental human rights apply to everyone, and to eliminate discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, an Ugandan lesbian activist and the leader of the Freedom to Roam, a lesbian advocacy group, was awarded the prestigious Martin Ennals Human Rights Defenders award on October 13 in Geneva, Switzerland. Nabagesera is the first gay rights activist and the 20th Laureate to receive the Ennals award, considered to be only second in prestige to that of the Nobel Peace Prize.

David Kato and Nabagesera’s names had been included in a list of known Ugandan homosexuals, published in October 2010, that also called for the killing of homosexuals in Uganda by the Rolling Stone newspaper. She and Kato sued the newspaper in Uganda’s highest court and publicly confronted the escalating homophobia, by bravely appearing on television and radio on numerous occasions. Because of the frightening anti-​gay environment in Uganda, she has been forced to move from one location to another, from house to house, to dodge potential violence directed toward her, even death.

10. Cameron Announces Support for Gay Marriage, Tory Led Government Announces New Foreign Aid Policy Based on LGBT Human Rights Records

David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, declared his support for legalized gay marriage at a Tory Party conference in early October to less than an enthusiastic audience that was marked by protest, prompting some party delegates walk out. The Conservative Party leader forcefully expressed his support for gay marriage: “Conserrvatives believe in ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.” Cameron’s endorsement was immediately repudiated by a spokesperson of the Church of England, joined by various leaders of the British Roman Catholic Church.

Cameron also announced that his government would leverage its foreign assistance to bilateral allies based upon their LGBT human rights records. This foreign policy move is seen by some as much a domestic move to cut back on foreign assistance spending, but to bridge its spending aims to a growing popular issue at home that Cameron continues to pursue. Many LGBT activists in the “Global South” have reservations, and feel it smacks of Britain’s former colonialist past and could be counterproductive. But this move by Britain was enthusiastically supported by Nepali lawmakers, as well as gay activists there, as reported by the New Civil Rights Movement.

Image of David Kato courtesy of the African Activist blog. The UN Human Rights Council photo courtesy of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Columbia Law School student Joy Ziegeweid ’12 has been awarded the prestigious Skadden Fellowship to further her public-service law careers.

Ziegeweid will use the fellowship to work at Sanctuary for Families’ Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services, where she will represent Russian immigrants who have been victims of domestic violence or sex trafficking. As part of her fellowship, Ziegeweid plans to advocate for her Russian-speaking clients in family court, and on immigration matters and referrals to providers of medical, psychiatric, and social services.

Ziegeweid, an undergraduate Russian major, spent several years working in Moscow between college and law school. During her years in Russia, she noticed many familiar social problems—domestic violence, exploitation of immigrant labor, and police brutality, to name a few. She was struck by the lack of legal recourse available to persons whose rights had been violated. Thus, when she decided to study law, it was with the express goal of becoming a public interest attorney in the United States, where the legal system, despite its many imperfections, can be used to defend existing rights and challenge the status quo, she said.

During her first year of law school, she participated in the Battered Immigrant Women’s Project, supervised by an attorney from Sanctuary for Families.  She found the combination of family law and immigration law fascinating so she continued on as an intern at Sanctuary and quickly realized the utility of her Russian language skills combined with her legal education.

Discussing her project, Ziegeweid explains that while the Russian-speaking communities of New York are large—Russian is the third-most commonly spoken foreign language in New York, and there are around 200,000 Russian-speaking households–there are no organizations aimed specifically at assisting Russian-speaking victims of domestic violence and related forms of gender-based violence, and there are very few attorneys who speak Russian and work with these clients. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Russian-speaking victims of domestic violence and trafficking are often isolated within New York’s Russian-speaking communities. Because of the particular history of police and judicial corruption in the countries of the former Soviet Union, Russian-speaking victims are extraordinarily reluctant to engage the law enforcement and legal systems. A lack of coordinated outreach to Russian-speaking communities further compounds the problem.

Her project will be located in Sanctuary for Families’ office in the Brooklyn Family Justice Center, where she will be able to collaborate with the Special Victims Division at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office and with other service providers in the Family Justice Center. “The primary goal of my project, of course, will be to provide culturally appropriate, holistic legal representation in immigration and family law matters. However, I will also develop coordinated outreach strategies with other service providers, connect clients to the necessary support services to escape violence, including medical, mental health, housing, and economic self-sufficiency services, and strengthen and build upon existing collaborations among community groups, faith-based organizations, and health-care providers,” said Ziegeweid.

The Skadden Fellowship enables students to use the education and opportunities that Columbia Law School gave them on behalf of people who otherwise would go unrepresented, said Ellen Chapnick, Dean for Social Justice Initiatives.

Ziegeweid and Kate Stinson, ’10 are among 28 graduating law students and judicial clerks awarded the highly sought-after two-year fellowships. The Skadden Fellowship provides recipients a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. In addition, Skadden Fellows also benefit from a supportive community of past recipients, a group that includes some of the most accomplished social justice lawyers in the country.

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation was established in 1988 by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, in honor of the law firm’s 40th anniversary. The fellowship program, described by The Los Angeles Times as “a legal Peace Corps,” supports recent law school graduates who wish to provide legal services to the poor (including the working poor), the elderly, the homeless, and the disabled, as well as those deprived of their civil or human rights.

Sanctuary is the largest provider in the U.S. of legal services exclusively for victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking. They offer comprehensive and culturally competent legal advice and representation in cases involving orders of protection, child custody/visitation, child and spousal support, divorce, immigration, asylum, and prosecution of batterers in criminal matters. For more information about their projects and initiatives, please visit their website.

Tanya L. Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University who teaches about human rights in Eurasia and is a Harriman Institute affiliated faculty member. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender issues, sex trafficking, and media freedom. Originally posted on The New Civil Rights Movement:

The first formal United Nations report on the state of LGBT human rights was presented to the UN General Assembly on Thursday by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human rights, who has been an outspoken supporter of LGBT human rights.

In issuing the report, Pillay called on UN member states to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and prosecute all serious violations, repeal discriminatory laws, and end legal discrimination for all LGBT persons.

“On the basis of the information presented (in this report), a pattern of human rights violations emerges that demands a response,” Pillay said, according to a report by the AP.

“Governments and inter-​governmental bodies have often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said.

The findings of the report indicate that LGBT people face widespread discrimination everywhere in the world and are subjected to extreme violence, including rape, beatings and torture, evidenced by confirmed reports of mutilation and castration that were characterized by a “high degree of cruelty,” including forcible rape of lesbians, a notorious activity by anti-​gay men in South Africa.

LGBT persons also face criminal punishment in 76 countries and risk capital punishment in five countries, including Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. The report lays out the evidence of widespread discrimination and arbitrary arrests and criminal punishment based upon sexual orientation and gender identity:

In all regions, people experience violence and discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In many cases, even the perception of homosexuality or transgender identity puts people at risk. Violations include – but are not limited to – killings, rape and physical attacks, torture, arbitrary detention, the denial of rights to assembly, expression and information, and discrimination in employment, health and education. United Nations mechanisms, including human rights treaty bodies and the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, have documented such violations for close to two decades.

The report, titled “Discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity” (below) was directed to be prepared by the Pillay’s office in June by the UN Human Rights Council when the Council adopted its first resolution in support of LGBT rights, after previous anti-​gay resolutions in 2010 had been adopted by the UN General Assembly in early readings, that called for the execution of gays.

READ: UN Adopts Historic First LGBT Human Rights Resolution

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, led the effort to overturn the earlier version of the resolutions, ultimately including sexual orientation and gender identity as groups that must be protected from extra-​judicial punishments, including summary executions.

The Council’s report bookends Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s historical speech affirming the human rights of LGBT persons delivered in Geneva on December 6. Clinton outlined new U.S. foreign policy that includes LGBT human rights as a part of the Obama Administration’s human rights policies. In conjunction, the White House issued a National Security Council memorandum outlining the government’s mandate, inclusive of agencies, that directs reporting from each agency and how they plan to operationalize their responsibilities for enforcement within six months.

View OHCHR: Discriminatory Laws and Practices and Acts of Violence Against Individuals Based on their Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity on Scribd

From Columbia Law Professor and Nation columnist Patricia Williams, cross posted from the January 2, 2012 issue of the Nation and Williams’ own blog, Madlawprofessor:

You know these are interesting times when Glenn Beck, Dianne Feinstein, Rand Paul and the ACLU all stand on the same side of an issue. The issue in question is Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), particularly Sections 1031–1033, being discussed by the House and Senate as I write and headed to the president’s desk any day now. These hastily added, under-the-radar provisions, co-sponsored by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin, would allow for the indefinite military detention of any person alleged to be a member of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.” The provisions also apply to any person who supports or aids “belligerent” acts against the United States, whether the person is apprehended beyond our borders or on domestic soil.

For noncitizens, such detention would be mandatory. And while news agencies from Reuters to the Huffington Post have recently reported that American citizens would be “exempt” from this requirement, the truth is more complicated. Military detention would still be the default, even for citizens, but at the discretion of the president, it could be waived in favor of handing over the case to domestic law enforcement. Under this law, if the Defense Department thinks you’re a terrorist, there would be no presumption of innocence; you would be presumed a detainee of the military unless the executive decides otherwise. Without such a waiver, again, even if you’re a citizen, you will never hear words like “alleged” or “suspected.” You will be an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” with limited rights to appeal that status, no rights to due process, or to a jury, or to a speedy trial guided by the rules of evidence.

According to the “law of war” invoked by these sections of the NDAA, a person in military custody can be held indefinitely, without charge and without access to civilian courts. Perhaps most significant, with the suspension of constitutional provisions for due process, there would be no Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. During the Congressional debate over the NDAA, proponents like Senators Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham argued that when we capture someone who is deemed an enemy, we must start with the presumption that “the goal is to gather intelligence” and “prosecution is a secondary concern.” In numbingly infantile terms, they declared that “the meanest, nastiest killers in the world” should be questioned for “as long as it takes,” without them “lawyering up.” This need to make “them” talk was cited repeatedly, endlessly, as the main justification for military detention, with references to “surprise” technologies to get prisoners to speak. As though Abu Ghraib had never happened, there was exuberant embrace of methods Senator Graham promised would not be publicized by the Army Field Manual.

Against the backdrop of President Obama’s recent exercise of that broadest of all possible executive actions—the targeted assassination of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki—the controversy over military detention (and Obama’s threat to veto the NDAA) might seem less dramatic. (Senator Graham carried on gleefully about how much less constrained death is than “indefinite detention.”) But there is a crucial distinction: killing Awlaki, however extreme, was an action ostensibly based on tailored and specifically considered intelligence. Whether or not one agrees with it, it was not a decision generated by the kind of far-reaching, automatically militarizing mechanism this law would institutionalize.

As with much post-9/11 rhetoric, the Congressional debaters spoke of “terror” as though it were a clearly defined and embodied evil. But it is not at all clear what distinguishes mere dissent or sympathy or belief or commitment or satire from the kinds of expressions of hostile ideologies that this legislation would deem dangerous. If passed, the NDAA will inevitably be followed by a raft of First Amendment litigation. And what about “high crimes” like treason—would they still be tried in federal courts? Is treason more or less worrisome than “terrorism”?

And talk about iconic constitutional constructions: Glenn Beck’s online magazine, The Blaze, recently published a straightforwardly libertarian critique of the bill; the comments from his readers sizzle with Second Amendment belligerence from those “patriots” who declare that they are running out to buy more ammo and defecting to the hills. (“Want to see an army vet become a domestic terrorist?” reads the first comment. “If they pass this law…I will adopt a strategy of asymmetric warfare against the US government.”)

This latter breed of discontent also dovetails, no doubt, with deep, lingering resentments over states’ rights dating back to the Civil War, when the Union army occupied and governed Southern states in an effort to maintain order and protect ex-slaves. (Indeed, the proposed law would in effect revoke the Posse Comitatus Act, the Reconstruction-era law that bars the Army from engaging in domestic law enforcement.) In a less obvious way, the stripping of due process also re-establishes first- and second-class tiers of citizenship, eviscerating the Fourteenth Amendment by allowing the rights of citizenship to be suspended even more comprehensively than birthers and anti-immigration activists could have dreamed: by simple fiat.

“Citizen or not,” insists Senator Graham, it’s only “using good old-fashioned common sense” that persons covered by the act shouldn’t be given more rights than if they were in Afghanistan. And with that conceptual wand, I guess we have lowered the constitutional bar to whatever it is in Afghanistan.

Devi Rao, CLS ’10, is a Skadden Fellow for Educational and Employment Opportunities at the National Women’s Law Center, where she focuses on using Title IX to promote safe school environments, including preventing gender-based bullying. Devi is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia Law School, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review.  She discusses the 11th Circuit’s new Glenn v. Brumby decision below, cross posted from the National Law Women’s Center blog:

Last week, a federal appeals court in Georgia with a conservative reputation ruled in the strongest terms that “[a]n individual cannot be punished because of his or her gender-nonconformity. Because these protections are afforded to everyone, they cannot be denied to a transgender individual.”

In 2007, Vandy Elizabeth Glenn (who at that time went by Glenn Morrison) told her boss at the Georgia General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Counsel that she was planning on transitioning from male to female. He promptly fired her, after remarking that “it’s unsettling to think of someone dressed in women’s clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing,” and describing a male in women’s clothing as “unnatural.”

In a unanimous opinion written by Judge Rosemary Barkett, the court held that “discriminating against someone on the basis of his or her gender non-conformity constitutes sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and that “discrimination against a transgender individual because of her gender nonconformity is sex discrimination.”

This case is a huge step forward for LGBT rights—it will force many employers to think twice before they fire transgender workers for discriminatory reasons. And it sends a message to transgender men and women that they are legally protected from sex discrimination in the workplace. It also reaffirms the continuing importance of the Equal Protection Clause’s protection against discrimination on the basis of gender stereotypes today.

Moreover, although the decision was based on the Equal Protection Clause—which covers only governmental discrimination—its reasoning would seem to apply to the context of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in both public and private workplaces. The Eleventh Circuit relied on Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a Title VII Supreme Court case, for the proposition that discrimination based on gender stereotypes is unlawful sex discrimination. And courts routinely use Title VII cases in interpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in education. So the Glenn decision has the potential to lead to greater and greater protection for transgender individuals in other spheres.

Still, there is much work to be done. Currently there is no federal law in place that explicitly protects LGBT individuals in the workplace, and although the Obama Administration has issued strong protections for transgender federal employees, in many states it’s legal to fire someone solely because they’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The absence of such protection has had significant impact on many transgender workers. In a recent study, 47% of transgender respondents said they had experienced an adverse job outcome—being fired, not hired, or denied promotion—because of being transgender. A full 26% reported being fired due to discrimination.

There are two bills currently pending before Congress that could provide much-needed protections to LGBT employees and students. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would protect individuals from discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity in both public and private employment. And the Student Non-Discrimination Act would outlaw discrimination in K-12 public schools on the basis of actual or perceived gender identity and sexual orientation.

Congress must pass these laws to close the dangerous loopholes that currently allow discrimination against LGBT individuals. The Glenn decision is a historic step, but it won’t get us all the way there.

Erin Meyer is a 2011 graduate of Columbia Law School now working in the litigation group at Hogan Lovells US LLP.  She was an active member of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law as well as completing the certificate in the study of Gender and Sexuality Law.  Below, she shares her thoughts on a recent article that was emailed to new attorneys.  She extends her appreciation to Didi Gosson (Columbia University class of 2010) and Jennifer Bernstein (Columbia University class of 2009) for their helpful insight and feedback on this writing.

As a recent law school graduate who is about to become a newly-admitted attorney, I’ve begun reading the “Lexis Hub for New Attorneys” emails which promise “insights and advice to enhance your career success.” Typically these emails contain a list of links to LexisNexis articles on topics such as how to get a job, how to be a successful associate, and how to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

In the latest email, a link to one article stood out: “Why Makeup May Increase a Woman’s Professional Credibility.” I clicked on the link to the full article, titled “How Makeup Can Boost Your Career.” The first words of advice? “Career women – if you want to be taken more seriously on the job or in interviews, wear makeup.”

I nearly choked, but continued to read on. “The right amount of makeup increases other people’s perceptions of a woman’s competence, trustworthiness and likeability,” LexisNexis advises, citing a Harvard study. “Women who wear makeup are perceived as more attractive and competent than those who do not.” Quoting one of the authors of the study, LexisNexis suggests that “women should be careful to assess the proper level of makeup for different work settings, noting that deeper shades of lipstick may offer a take-charge impression, while a lighter tone would help provide a more balanced, collaborative appeal.” Moreover, cosmetics “can significantly change how smart people think you are on first impression, or how warm and approachable, and that look is completely within a woman’s control, when there are so many things you cannot control.”

Indignant and frustrated with LexisNexis for encouraging women to conform to these gender stereotypes without thinking critically about the cost to women of doing so, my first reaction was a sardonic, “Wow, it’s great to know as I enter law firm life that I’m at least empowered enough to control the color of my lipstick!” Why should I spend my time and energy each morning deliberating about whether I’m wearing enough makeup to convince fellow associates that I’m competent or whether my lipstick will persuade partners that I can be an effective leader, while my male colleagues catch up on sleep or get a head start on meeting their billable hour requirements? Why are men privileged enough to show up to work bare-faced and still be perceived as smart and likeable whereas women who do the same risk losing their credibility?

Wondering what other women would think of this article, I reached out to two trusted friends from Columbia University, Jennifer Bernstein and Didi Gosson. They brought a different but important perspective to the article. Jennifer advised me not to be hasty in reaching the conclusion that encouraging working women to conform to certain standards of beauty necessarily disempowers them. What about considering women’s good looks and self-presentation as a form of “erotic capital”? Guiding me to an article on how women should capitalize on their looks because failing to use our erotic capital in the market shortchanges us economically, she reminded me of cultural feminist thinkers who urge us to value traditionally “feminine” traits and beware discrediting the power of beauty, a power more often wielded by women than by men.

Didi suggested we remain cognizant of the fact that our society in general is obsessed with appearances and men as well as women suffer from our superficiality, although the beauty industry targets women differently than it does men and the burden of living up to ideals of beauty may indeed fall disproportionately on women. With a worldwide beauty industry worth $160 billion per year and the average woman surviving on significantly less than the average man’s income and with proportionately less in investments and savings, women may be ill-advised in taking LexisNexis’ advice to purchase a few more shades of lipstick to boost their career and economic standing. In the words of Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune, women need to “question whether ‘because I’m worth it’ might be better applied to savings accounts than to make-up” (Redfern and Aune, Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement (2010), 23-4.).

I appreciate both Jennifer’s and Didi’s responses because they reveal the variety of feminist perspectives on a subject that LexisNexis has clearly failed to think critically about. Although it may be true that wearing makeup to work does increase others’ perceptions of a woman’s competence, we should question whether that truth is one that we want to wholly embrace without reservations. The ability to boost my career by wearing makeup is a troubled form of power – a means of gaining the respect and confidence of my coworkers and superiors in the short-term, but perhaps at the expense of the longer-term goal of giving women access to powers aside from the power of beauty, powers that have enabled men to advance their careers without having to devote time, money, and effort to purchasing and applying makeup.

Cross posted from Jenny M. James’ blog, Capacious Ground from November 10, 2011.  James is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. Her academic interests include twentieth-century North American literature, feminist and queer theory, memory studies, and American culture.

On November 15th I woke up to this image on the front homepage of the New York Times, the Huffington Post and other media outlets. What had been the spectacle, the performance, the vitality of occupying the space of Zuccotti Park had been cleaned, cleansed, cleared of the traces of a dynamic collective life. This wiping clean appeared to me such an egregious representation of the immanent, violent forces of disciplinary power ready to be exerted at any moment. This photo seems to hold a certain affective power and somehow touched me more than the unfortunately more familiar photographs of literal violence against men and women taken on the early morning of the 15th when the NYPD decided to sweep the streets. On its most basic level, Occupy Wall Street is about the maintenance, survival, and celebration of the public sphere, and the spaces it inhabits.

This is a photograph of history that can only be read, or registered as history, within the context of those other photographs of violence but also of uplift, protest, disorder, joy. And it symbolizes to me the lightening quick capacity for history to be both made and erased. This problem of capturing and documenting history as it happens is very present to me as I finish my dissertation on the 1960s – an era now resonating today, the details of which we have for decades afterward misconceived, misremembered and even forgotten. To look at our recent past of September 17th to November 17th, 2011, to think of the quick almost immeasurable moments of change that take place overnight in Occupy’s message, constituency, regional, national and international reach is to take seriously how history is in the doing which can be confusing, disorderly and lacking a “clear message.” To speak of being part of the 99%, to call for an occupation of land and space is also to be aware of our own occupation of history, and the responsibility that this brings.

I started this post a while ago, trying to work through all my mixed and amorphous thoughts about what was and is the Occupy movement. This is how I began:

“A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend and fellow doctoral student about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the rising socio-cultural anxiety over the devaluing of what George Lipsitz calls “the possessive investment in whiteness.” For the first month or so of the Occupy movement, its public face was not surprisingly single, white, male and under 45 years of age. The default “subject” who chose to “occupy” public space was the familiar figure of a recognizable American norm. As Jon Stewart so aptly captured in an opening bit for the Daily Show on October 5th, the rhetoric of the weakening certainty of the [White] American Dream, the lack of viable economic opportunities, and the drama of what it means for a white man to not be able to find work, shows up both in the language of the Occupiers as well as the Tea Party movement communiques. His two dueling spokesmen for the polarized parties are both imagined as white men wearing patriotic hats. However, unlike the tri-corner hat of 1776 that Tea Party folks like to don, Stewart finds a new costume in Zuccotti Park – the Union Army Civil War cap. The hilarity of this segment literally brought tears to my eyes, but per usual Stewart isn’t just kidding – he evinces an important philosophical and rhetorical phenomenon: the competing American mythologies that still manifest within our current political split. The Tea Party grasps onto the libertarian, individualist model of freedom and American citizenship symbolized by the Revolutionary War; the Occupiers instead invoke rhetoric of union and national solidarity that has its roots in the fight against confederacy.”

My concern from the beginning of this movement was the capacity for the organizers to invoke a greater diversity in their rhetoric and constituency. The strength of my critique lasted for about a month. By the one month anniversary on October 17th, the movement had already incorporated the iconic and symbolic profile of Angela Davis on their poster for the “Occupy Party” that took place at Times Square.

By October 28th, less than two weeks after this poster was distributed across the internet, Angela Davis publicly joined the movement and spoke at Occupy Philadelphia. Her words highlight our present movement’s relationship to the ones that came before:

“The Unity of the 99% must be a complex unity. Movements in the past have primarily appealed to specific communities, whether workers, students, Black communities, Latino communities, women, LGBT communities, indigenous people. Or these movements have been organized around specific issues, like the environment, food, water, war, the prison industrial complex.” Speaking of her own work fighting the prison industrial complex, she goes on to list the allied goals of “justice, creativity, equality, freedom!” Finally she quotes Audre Lorde: “differences must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic” (from the Master’s Tools essay). If this isn’t a fabulous, creative making real on the claims of feminist intersectional politics, I’m not sure what is. Clearly Davis’ and Lorde’s words are hard to beat. This passage critically demonstrates how previous qua Sixties social movements were organized either around specific communities or specific issues. The Occupy Wall Street movement is doing something quite different by making claims and attempting to account for such a large and capacious collection of peoples and causes. Perhaps this might seem to lack a “message,” but it also powerfully demands us to be the creative participants that can interpret the movement and its rhetoric for ourselves, and make it our own – a very different conception of ideology than the communiques of 1968.

You can find more of this speech on youtube, where you will ironically also see in the background a poster for Ready.gov (see post from October 7th). Thanks to the The Feminist Wire for alerting me to this video in the first place.

What might happen tomorrow, on the two month anniversary of the movement, we can only guess. But I am hopeful tonight, and its a different feeling of hope than the perhaps too audacious hopefulness I felt on Obama’s election night.

(P.S. Check out the interesting collection of photos that come up on Google search when I typed in “Black Nationalist Organization 1960s protest arrest.” At least three of these photos are from the Occupy movement).

(Photo credits @NYTimes)