Flags waiving, music blaring, the nearly 6,000 participants in this past New York Pride celebration meant that folks had much to be prideful for. Passing the Republican majority Senate late Friday night two weeks ago, the state legalized same-sex marriage, making it the 6th and largest state to recognize the right. Many are calling this a huge and especially important victory for gay rights, as this same month in 1969 New York City saw a police raid at the Stonewall Inn (a bar in the West Village), which ultimately helped to spawn the gay rights movement.

When I heard the news of the law’s passage, I was sitting in one of my favorite bars in Oakland with two fellow social justice advocates. The three of us clinked glasses, hugged, and hollered in the name of gay rights, human rights, and, ultimately, justice. I was on an incredible high that made my participation in the San Francisco Pride an even more important and special experience for me. It wasn’t until the weekend ended – the floats put away, ticker tape cleared, and crowds dispersed that the fog lifted and I began to ponder the possible future effects of the law.

In a New York Times OP-Ed piece entitled Marriage Is a Mixed Blessing, Katherine M. Franke points out that while many in the community have worked hard to establish the right for same-sex couples to marry, many have also been working hard to establish alternatives to marriage. For these individuals, domestic partnerships and civil unions are not a consolation prize to those not allowed to marry, but instead provide a sense of freedom that doesn’t have to conform to the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.

This movement does not claim to be anti-marriage, but rather, pro-choice, in that commitment should not be an all or nothing decision. With the understanding that in most cases domestic partnerships are recognized to rectify the injustice of same-sex couples not being able to marry, many fear that with the passage of the new law will come the abolition of domestic partnerships. If employers offer marriage as the only option, this may mean that those currently in a domestic partnership run the risk of losing their healthcare benefits. Ultimately, these individuals will have no choice; they will be forced to either marry or lose their benefits all together.

The RJ movement focuses on reproductive oppression, rather than a narrow focus on protecting the legal right to abortion. Therefore, the central theme of the reproductive justice framework is a focus on the control and exploitation of women’s bodies, sexuality, and reproduction as an effective strategy for controlling women and communities. Controlling a woman’s body means controlling her life, her options, and her potential, and thus it can be said that controlling one individual becomes a strategic pathway to regulating entire communities.

There exists a fear that the NY law will ultimately control or oppress the gay community through these individual state sanctioned relationships. While the state may not be controlling their bodies in the physical sense, they are controlling their choice, options, and thus, their potential. Without the aid of insurance, many may find adoption and assisted reproductive techniques difficult or impossible to attain. This is severely limiting the gay community from participating in a reproductive choice.

Many have contently been living for years without the legal ability to marry and have developed their own way of loving, caring, and living together that they feel fits them better than marriage. This is an extremely complex issue that the state will not be able to resolve over night; however, it is an issue that deserves extreme consideration. Whether gay or straight, is it fair to force people to marry in order to have their committed relationships recognized and valued (in the eyes of the state)? While we struggle to find answers to the new problems the law will inevitably bring, you may find me slowly and quietly waiving my flag for the gay rights movement.

Nikki Tuttle

Psychologist Joseph Nicolosi is the author behind the book, Parents Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, as well as an “expert” in what is called reparative therapy, which seeks to “repair” one’s homosexuality. The CNN featured series, “The Sissy Boy Experiment” includes personal stories and reflections by Nicolosi’s former patients who, as young boys, were sent to Nicolosi to “bring out the heterosexuality in them,” leading to emotionally detrimental effects. (more…)

I am sick of being harassed and intimidated on the streets! Whether it’s catcalls from drunk frat boys back on my school campus, or lewd gestures from randoms while walking home from work, I, along with every individual, deserve to feel safe and, hell, even sexy, while walking down the street. I know I am not the only one, as a group of women have launched the Hollaback! website, a Facebook page, and a movement that uses local activism and mobile technology to end street harassment. The movement asks, “Been holla’ed at? Hollaback!” They recognize that street harassment is one of the most prominent forms of gender-based violence (which is nearly never reported and one of the least legislated issues) affecting women, girls, and LGBTQ people, and is thus providing the tools necessary to fight back.

Here’s how it works (more…)

Someone victimized me this week. Someone stole my purse. I have been struggling with feelings of violation, anger, hurt, fear, and sadness ever since. Upon reporting the theft to a police officer, he engaged in “blame the victim” rhetoric, telling me that I made it easy for the person to violate me by leaving my purse unattended. Without negating the fact that no one should have stolen my purse because it wasn’t his or hers to take, I want to emphasize how safe I felt until the moment I realized the purse was gone. I left it alone for a short period of time at a bar I go to regularly with a group of people I know well and attend law school with in a town of less than 2000 people on a night that was not busy. I thought I knew everyone in the bar and trusted each person enough to leave my purse while I went to listen to a friend on the back porch. But when I came back in, it was gone.

If I ever needed another reason to keep fighting for reproductive justice, it was this incident. The big-picture reality check is this was just a purse. The stuff I lost was only stuff. What if someone had raped me that night? Or forcefully sterilized me? Or told me I couldn’t get married or adopt children? What if someone denied my access to healthcare? Or told me I could not get an abortion I was seeking? (more…)

First, with the Stupak Amendment, and now, with Adventures in Bigotry, I’m continually in awe of what happens to the Constitution in the hands of Michigan representatives. It’s been an incredibly interesting week of discussion at the University of Michigan Law School. A Michigan Assistant Attorney General, Andrew Shirvell, has for months been stalking and harassing UofM’s openly gay student body president, Chris Armstrong, calling him, inter alia, a racist, elitist Nazi recruiter for the homosexual agenda. Mr. Shirvell has been barred from campus and, as of a couple days ago, the hearing for Mr. Armstrong request for a personal protection order against him has been delayed. This issue became national news over the past week, in major part due to CNN’s coverage and interviews with both Mr. Shirvell and legal analysts.

Likely in response to this controversy, Mr. Shirvell has taken a voluntary leave of absence, and it has been reported that he will face disciplinary action on his return. Why that is or what will happen is entirely unclear. Michigan’s Attorney General has been largely inconsistent when expressing his views on the matter, in the same breath defending and decrying Mr. Shirvell’s conduct, but appears to remain committed to not firing him (personally, I’m having an especially hard time reconciling the Attorney General’s apparent decision to take disciplinary action with his persistent defense of this conduct as protected). Michigan’s Governor has tweeted that, were she still the Attorney General, Mr. Shirvell “would have already been fired.” (more…)

Last week, University of San Diego LSRJ lured over 120 people to our last event of the semester with a sultry title, Chipotle, and a raffle for chocolate body paint, but the attendees stayed for a substantive conversation about the evolution and limitations of the constitutional “right to privacy.”

The split between the 5^th and 11^th Circuits over Lawrence v. Texas’ application to the sale and promotion of sex toys spawned “My Body, My Bedroom.”  Whereas the 11^th Circuit ruled in Williams v. Attorney General of Alabama, 378 F.3d 1232 (5th Cir. 2004), that Lawrence does not protect the sale of sex toys, the 5^th Circuit examined the question in Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle, 517 F.3d 738 (11th Cir. 2008), and came to the opposite conclusion.

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In Lawrence v. Texas [1] the United States Supreme Court not only struck down Texas’ sodomy law, but also provided a more expansive ruling, holding that immorality alone cannot serve as a justification to prohibit a certain practice. This case was considered one of the greatest victories in history for the LGBT community. However, some have argued that Lawrence, important as it is, offered only “domesticated liberty” for LGBTs in that its ruling did not extend beyond the private domain and gave no acceptance to the notion of a more substantial kind of sexual liberty that the queer community embraces.[2] Although I find merit in this critique, I believe that even the perceived domestic liberty provided by Lawrence did not truly offer enough of an opportunity for gays to freely practice a gay lifestyle in the home. In fact, it seems that Lawrence only offered gays freedom in the bedroom, but not in the rest of the home. The image of a gay family of any kind, with or without children, living freely and publicly was not part of the vision that Lawrence suggested. The majority opinion emphasized that its decision “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual person seeks to enter.” Therefore, while Lawrence did provide for domestic liberty, the domestic liberty was intended to be confined to the bedroom exclusively. (more…)

For my comments on Panel One, Reproductive Justice: Expanding the Vision to “Collateral” Fields, I would like to “expand” by focusing more specifically on the interrelationships of lesbians and abortions.

Lesbians are by definition “reproductive outsiders,” as Jenni Millbank has rightly theorized.  This outsiderness, in theory and in practice, is most obvious in several categories:  as the protection of legal parenthood status from challenges by non-lesbians, including the state in its child protective powers;  as the conflict between lesbians who have legal parenthood status and lesbians who do not have legal parenthood status (often, although not always, following biological status); and as the legal ability to access “reproductive technology,” including very basic and rather non-technological technology such as insemination.

Thus there is an important argument to be made that lesbians and other sexual minorities do not inhabit a “collateral” field to be integrated into the house of reproductive rights.  Additionally, it is also true that reproductive rights have an essential place in the LGBT legal reform movements.   The symbiotic relationship between reproductive rights and sexual rights is not unproblematic, but it is an experience that is lived, litigated, and theorized.   The experience occurs across various societies and states, with diverse economic, racial, ethnic, and disability hierarchies.  

Here I’d like to highlight the specific relationship between lesbians and abortion. (more…)

There are at least three different questions we can ask about the role that morality can or should play in issues related to the contemporary LGBT rights movement: First, can the government legitimately account for questions of morality when it legislates in LGBT-related matters? Second, should the LGBT rights movement rely on moral arguments when it seeks reform through the political and legislative processes? And third, should the LGBT rights movement rely on moral arguments when it litigates?

The quick answer to the first question is “it depends.” The quick answers to the second and third questions are “yes” and “no” respectively. I elaborate briefly below on each of these.

The Supreme Court held in Bowers v. Hardwick that moral judgments, as codified into law, provided a sufficient basis upon which to withstand a due process challenge to a statute that prohibits a certain conduct or practice. This “morality is enough” holding was renounced by the Court in Lawrence v. Texas, at least when it comes to a conduct or practice that implicates a liberty interest (such as the choice of sexual partners).

It is clear, then, that moral judgments or reasons are not enough to justify the criminal sanction of consensual same-sex sexual conduct engaged in by adults. But what role can morality play in other types of LGBT-related legislation? Can morality, for example, constitute a sufficient basis upon which to justify the denial of marital or adoption rights to LGBT people? (more…)

In her feature on the supposed generational divide in the pro-choice movement, which ran in Sunday’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg correctly observes that abortion has hit the headlines recently in the context of health care reform and the horrendously restrictive Stupak amendment—and it’s not something reproductive rights advocates are happy about.  But there isn’t much else I can relate to in her assessment of the current landscape in reproductive rights advocacy and activism.  In fact, I think the story—which argues that there is a chasm between the “menopausal militia,” meaning the generation of feminists who came of age before Roe v. Wade and view abortion in “stark political terms,” and the “millennials,” the younger set for whom Stolberg suggests abortion is a personal issue—misses the mark in a sad but revealing way.

Relying on quotes from Naral Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan, Stolberg promotes this political/personal dichotomy without actually explaining how this supposed shift to the personal manifests itself—other than the fact that the post-Roe generations seem less responsive to single-issue pro-choice calls to action.  Provocative accompanying artwork, which consists of a black rectangle with brightly colored letters spelling “WE” floating above “ME,” implies that younger women are selfish in neglecting abortion politics.  Yet Stolberg acknowledges that “a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30.”  In fact, she herself points to several examples of young people organizing right now to stop the Stupak amendment (including LSRJ’s recent webinar on abortion and health care reform legislation).  So what’s the issue?

Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg concludes that young people don’t respond to email alerts about contacting their legislators because they know abortion is legal and believe “if you really need one you can probably figure out how to get one.”  Which means not only are we selfish, but we’re also foolishly complacent.  But what about the millions of poor women, immigrant women, and young women who can’t ever “figure out how to get one” because the barriers we’ve erected to accessing legal abortion are simply too high?  Such women may be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or to induce an abortion through other means, with serious consequences for the health and security of themselves and their families.  And what about those of us who aren’t poor, immigrant, or under 18 but believe deeply that how our society treats those women reflects on all of us, individually and collectively? (more…)