Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

  Russell K. Robinson The Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence places people of color and LGBT people on segregated doctrinal paths heading in divergent directions.  While equality is expanding for LGBT people, it is evaporating for people of color.  Nearly 20 years ago, the Supreme Court decided Romer v. Evans, the first of a string […]

This week the British government introduced a bill into Parliament that would allow same-sex couples to marry.   While the bill may signal progress on the issue of marriage equality in Britain, some details about the bill and the circumstances surrounding it are worth noting: – Britain now has a civil status called “Civil Partnerships” which […]

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 […]

Andy Kravis is a rising 3L at Columbia Law School, where he is pursuing certification in gender and sexuality law through Columbia’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law.  In addition, he serves as Submissions Editor for the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, and he works on cases for the Columbia Sexuality and Gender Law […]

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 Instead we, a rabbi and a law professor, have withdrawn our appearances at the event, disturbed that the Equality Forum, a major mainstream gay […]

Last week a court in Uganda issued a decision permanently enjoining a daily Kampala newspaper from printing the names and addresses of persons alleged to be gay or lesbian, and awarded damages to those whose identities the paper had already been published.  On the front page of the paper, above the pictures of the supposed […]

Back in November, the U.S. representative to the UN Human Rights Committee abstained when a vote was taken on a resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions and other killings on the grounds that the final resolution removed a specific mention of sexual orientation-based killings that had been included in the document since 2008 (the […]

The hit TV show The Office, is a franchise.  It originated in the U.K., then came over here to the U.S., then set up a beachhead in France, Germany, Canada (Quebec), Chile, and is now getting its own treatment in Israel, HaMisrad.  The Israeli version has been getting ample media and web attention for it’s gay […]

Like many people, I’ve taken hard the suicide of Tyler Clementi.  I got choked up this afternoon in front of the University of Connecticut Law School faculty when I mentioned his death as part of a talk I was giving on lgbt rights more generally.  But I’d like to avoid using this post as either […]

A: What we think we know about their sexualities deviates from a narrowly defined and ruthlessly enforced notion of  “healthy adult sexuality.”  He liked/wanted/got too much, she (is assumed to) like/want/get not enough.   The hub bub surrounding General Kagan’s (I love that title) nomination to the Supreme Court has unfortunately over-focused on her sexuality […]