Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

Marriage Equality in Maine:
Lessons Learned, Future Directions
Wednesday, November 4th 4:30 pm  Room 107, Greene Hall
▸ Suzanne Goldberg, Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law;
▸ Nate Persily, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science;
▸ James Tierney, Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School and former [...]

Reports from Maine show high turnout at the polls – this is read as good news for preserving marriage rights for same sex couples.  You know, homos don’t like rain!

The passage of Proposition 8 in California a year ago unleashed a troubling new strategy in the movement to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples: public shaming.  In an effort to slow down the ever-increasing use of propositions and referenda that forestall or overturn court or legislatively created marriage rights for same-sex couples, some advocates [...]

Nicole Medham is a third year law student at Columbia Law School and has these thoughts about a recent 20/20 episode that caught her attention when the authors of Freakonomics were interviewed about the what and why of various implications of feminism:
Last Friday’s edition of ABC’s 20/20 featured the authors of the bestseller Freakonomics, Steven [...]

Maine voters will see on their ballots next Tuesday a proposition to repeal legislation that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry.  The language on the ballot is:
Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?
The Research 2000/Daily Kos [...]

Last night at the Human Rights Campaign dinner President Barack Obama delivered his first big speech on lgbt issues since becoming President.   There was much anticipation for the speech, as some in the gay community feel that the President has not moved fast enough on the issues affecting our community.
If you can see this, then [...]

Yesterday’s New York Times ran a front page article about Liz Cheney and how she’s become the new doyenne of the Republican right. There’s much to say about what it means to have Vice President Dick (they call him that for a reason, right?) Cheney’s daughter pick up the cudgel of his father, but [...]

Today is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution this day in 1787.   I’ll be one of the speakers at our Constitution Day event, and have put together these brief remarks to raise the question: to whom do the rights contained in the Constitution belong?
Fifty years ago police officers entered the [...]

A majority of Americans could support same-sex marriage within five years regardless of whether state courts legalize such unions, a new study by Columbia Law Professor Nathaniel Persily and New York University Professor Patrick J. Egan have found.
The study estimates that 42 percent of the public now supports legalizing same-sex marriage, the highest level ever.
“If [...]

The last several weeks have been busy ones in the battle for marriage equality.  The governors of Maine and New Hampshire signed laws that allowed same sex couples to marry.  California’s Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 8, and we expected the New York State legislature to have a darn good chance of passing [...]