Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

Cross-posted to Medium. New York, June 13, 2017–Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic released a comprehensive country conditions report documenting the serious risks LGBT people in Guyana face. The report, Documentation of Country Conditions Regarding the Treatment of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender Individuals in Guyana, which can be filed as an index by […]

Cross-posted to Medium. In a significant gender equality ruling, the Supreme Court today struck down a federal immigration law that made it harder for fathers than mothers to pass their U.S. citizenship on to their children. Current immigration law discriminates between citizen fathers and citizen mothers whose children are born abroad. The Court recognized the […]

Since the news media is saturated with analysis of the Court’s arguments in today’s Proposition 8 case, this blog post offers a more personal view of the proceedings: I dashed down from my hotel room at 6:10 a.m. to catch a predawn ride with colleagues over to the Supreme Court.  Even at that hour, First […]

My remarks at a recent gathering at UCLA Law School recognizing the 40th anniversary of Roe and the 10th anniversary of Lawrence. Liberty, Equality & Sexual Freedom: A View from 29 Palms Katherine Franke[1] The occasion to reflect on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade[2] and the 10th anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas[3] at […]

Katherine Franke talks to Wisconsin Public Radio for an hour about what we should take from the prominence of gay rights in President Obama’s inauguration speech.  Listen here.

What new politics and ethical imperatives emerge when the rights of lesbian and gay people begin to gain traction, and when the state becomes a partner in defending those newly-won rights? In Dating the State: The Moral Hazards of Winning Gay Rights, just published by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, I offer a critical […]

The essay below written by Professor Katherine Franke appeared in Tikkun magazine in a debate on the meaning of Pinkwashing in Israel/Palestine: I applaud Tikkun’s willingness to provide a forum for the discussion of a complex range of perspectives on LGBT rights in Israel/Palestine. The opinion pieces written by Richard Silverstein and Arthur Slepian, along […]

by Rebecca Alpert and Katherine Franke (originally published in Tikkun Magazine) This week we were scheduled to speak at the Constitution Center as part of the Equality Forum’s 2012 LGBT Summit. Instead we, a rabbi and a law professor, have withdrawn our appearances at the event, disturbed that the Equality Forum, a major mainstream gay […]

Andrea L. Johnson, CLS ’12, Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic student and 2011 Super Lawyers Pro Bono Award Recipient, discusses the USA Today article on IVF and immigration law and the Clinic’s work with the ACLU to draft model “parentage” legislation: Earlier this month, USA Today published an article describing the absurd situation in which American […]

The Israeli Supreme Court last Thursday cut the prison term for a man convicted of “rape-by-deception” from 18 to 9 months.  It seems that lying about your ethnicity converts consensual sex to rape.  Really?  Well only if a Palestinian male citizen of Israel tells a woman he hooked up with that he was Jewish when […]