Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

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 […]

Read Nikolas Oscar Sparks’ Queer Theory Roundup from Feminist News, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender’s biannual newsletter below and download video podcasts from each session: Perhaps one of the best examples of the consistent interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration at Columbia University occurred this past semester between the Institute for Research on Women […]

Public Sex, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Afterlife of Homophobia, forthcoming in Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public (Carlos Motta & Joshua Lubin-Levy eds. 2011) Katherine Franke[1] Consider two events that dominated the news in the summer of 2011: Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress after it became public that he had been tweeting to some […]

Yesterday I got an e-mail from a reporter for Metro (one of those free papers they distribute at the top of the subway stairs every morning).  Seems she was doing a story about a website she’d stumbled upon, dickflash.com.  “It’s where people can go online and brag about their experiences exposing themselves,” the reporter wrote […]

In case you weren’t able to attend the Symposium we held last Friday, recognizing the influence of Judith Butler’s work to the law of gender and sexuality, you can now watch videos of three panels and Butler’s Keynote. Over 500 people attended the event, hearing Janet Halley, Kathryn Abrams, Dean Spade, David Eng, Morris Kaplan, […]

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Unless you were living in a cave you should be aware that a week ago Tuesday the people of Maine decided to pass on marriage rights for same-sex couples.  Commentators described it as not only “a harsh blow to the gay marriage drive,” but “a major set back to gay rights,” and “a tremendous and […]

The relative silence of a queer – or even a gay – voice in the health care reform debate of the last six months is confounding.  As someone who spent my 20’s and 30’s dealing with close friends and colleagues dying of AIDS, who watched many people become impoverished by their disease, and saw first […]

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, […]

Both during and after the City Bar Association panel I participated in a few weeks ago on the future of same sex marriage, I’ve gotten some push back for suggesting that we consider and evaluate the merits and risks of various constitutional arguments that have been made in the cases challenging the exclusion of same […]