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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

In a May 26 post on this blog, Columbia Law School Associate-in-Law Michael Kavey criticized the efforts of several New York school districts to dismantle critical civil rights protections for their students. The districts, presumably seeking to avoid financial liability, had been claiming in various cases across the state that the broad antidiscrimination and antiharassment safeguards […]

Scott Long was a Senior Fellow at the Center in 2010 and is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. Originally posted on his blog, A Paper Bird: Sex, Rights, and the World:       Many years ago, I decided never to take an interest in the sex lives of […]

This just in: Judge James Ware, acting very quickly after oral argument yesterday, has just issued a thoughtful opinion denying the ludicrous and offensive motion made by the Perry defendants that the trial opinion in the case be thrown out on account of the purported bias of the trial judge, Vaughn Walker (now retired).  The […]

Yesterday the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California released an opinion finding Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional in a bankruptcy filing brought by a married same-sex couple, Gene Douglas Balas and Carlos A. Morales.  Balas and Morales had been married in California during the window when marriages of […]

Last Friday Heath and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued new regulations instructing states that they could “offer same-sex couples many of the same financial and asset protections available to opposite-sex couples when a partner is entering a nursing home or care facility.”  The new rules relate to states’ ability to place a lien on […]

The Army, Navy and Air Force have all created new websites with official information about DADT.  The Navy’s, called ”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Implementation Information” is here, the Army’s is here, and the Air Force’s is here. Given that Columbia University has now signed an agreement with the Navy to bring NROTC (Naval Reserve […]