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 [...]

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 [...]

Chinyere Ezie, Columbia Law School class of 2010 is Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and former President of Outlaws (the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer/Allied student organization at Columbia Law School), offers the following reflections on ongoing attempts to bring lbgt people within the protection of federal hate crimes legislation in light of the deeply [...]

Katherine Darmer is a is a Professor of Law at Chapman University and is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow in the Gender & Sexuality Law Program this fall.   She offers the following observations about on-going litigation challenging a California High School’s failure to protect LGBT students from homophobic threats and violence:
Earlier this year, the New [...]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is back in New York for the annual fall gathering of heads of state at the U.N. General Assembly meeting.  As expected, his remarks to the body on Wednesday provoked outrage, walkouts, and general condemnation by various states and the media.  If all you did was read the press reports about [...]

Today the House Education and Labor Committee, Chaired by Rep. George Miller, began hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009 – a bill that would amend federal employment discrimination law to include sexual orientation and gender identity protections.  Various forms of this bill have been introduced into Congress in prior years, but it has [...]

Anyone interested in gender stereotyping should rejoice the decision released last Friday in Prowel v. Wise Business Forms.  Brian Prowel describes himself as “effeminate” and that due to his effeminacy he was harassed and retaliated against at his job in violation of the sex discrimination protections contained in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act [...]

The Gender and Sexuality Law Blog covered a case our Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic was handling back in May having to do with a man who applied for and was denied parole by the Massachusetts  Parole Board because he was gay.  See post here.
This week, the Parole Board granted Bruce Wilburn’s parole application.   See [...]

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 [...]

The California Supreme Court took the next step today in the ongoing battle over marriage rights for same sex couples, ruling 6-1 that the people of California had properly amended their constitution last November with Proposition 8, thereby limiting marriage to one man and one woman.   The Court’s opinion, widely predicted to come out as [...]