Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

San Diego has a reputation as a socially and political conservative city, especially with the large military presence of the Navy and a large population of veterans. Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego is no exception to this conservative atmosphere (on the part of both the students and administration). The school’s chapters of the Federalist Society, the Republican Students Association, and the Christian Legal Society have a large and vocal membership base. Throughout our LSRJ chapter’s relatively short span on campus, we have faced both explicit and subtle opposition from students and administration.

This opposition has ranged from certain members of the Student Bar Association stating that they do not wish to work with the “abortion club” to blatant theft of our chapter’s documents and materials.  Recently, we have faced the issue of censorship of an event flyer by the school’s administration and faculty. At our new fancy campus, student orgs have a lot of problems advertising events because no one is allowed to post flyers anywhere in the building. To advertize, a student organization must send a PDF file to the administration to get our flyers put on the 6 electronic touch-screens throughout the building.

For our first event, we had planned our Sex-Ed Trivia Night at a local happy hour. It is one of our most popular events, and we timed it to take place right after the student org fair to rake in 1Ls and other prospective members. To advertise the event, our co-chair, Thomas, produced an absolutely amazing poster, guaranteed to catch attention and bring in attendees. Our flyer had a black and purple background, with a pair of woman’s legs in heels, and with the event details underneath the simple high heels. Nothing lewd, nothing sexually-explicit, nothing to suggest that this was a portrayal of a stripper. It was simply a poster to generate interest and gain attention through a little flair of suggestiveness.

But after submitting our flyer, we immediately received a response from our administration letting us know that the school has been working over the years to improve its reputation in the community, and that our flyer posed a threat to the school’s image of professionalism. (more…)

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…)

A couple of weeks ago, I was irritated and hurt to see a television news story about Ines Sainz, the Latina sports reporter who was allegedly sexually harassed in the Jets’ locker room while trying to conduct an interview for TV Azteca. The rest of the press quickly jumped on the story, and pretty soon, pictures of what Sainz was wearing when she did the interview — and video clips about her feigning surprise at the cat calling — sprung up all over the internet.

My initial reaction was exactly what the press intended it to be: I was at first offended by the sexual harassment, then offended by the photos of Sainz and what she was wearing, and finally blamed her for bringing this on herself. “Come on, what did she think was going to happen when she walked into a locker room full of half-naked NFL players wearing something like that?! She knew exactly what she was doing.” (more…)

So, you’re in love.  I understand.  And s/he’s amazing, I know, we’ve most of us been there.  You share an indescribable connection of the heart and soul, a connection you’d soon like to develop into heart, body, and soul.  Yes, most of us have been there, too.  First, though, you have the “talk,” and then s/he tells you those three little words… I have HPV.

Unfortunately, more and more of us are, or will be, similarly situated yet again. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States.  According to the CDC, 80% of American women will be infected with HPV by age 50.  There are over 100 types of HPV, thusly named because some types can cause warts (a.k.a. papillomas) on different areas of the body, including the sexy parts.  Speaking of which, according to the CDC, at least 50% of sexually active people will be infected with genital HPV, over 6 million new cases per year.  Over 30 types of HPV can be transmitted through some kind of sexual contact (including all your best moves, original recipe to extra spicy).  Two types of HPV cause 90% of genital warts cases, and another two cause 75% of cervical cancer cases.

There are likely to be just as many reasons HPV is so prolific as there are terrifying statistics I just threw at you.  For example, there is no test for men, no treatment which eliminates it, and most infections go undetected because there are often no symptoms.  Vaccines are only (so far) FDA-approved for young people (under 26), and most effective when given prior to any sexual contact.  The virus is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, meaning condoms are effective, but not as effective as with other viruses (i.e., HIV).  A person’s body can usually fight the infection, mostly within a year or two; however, the persistent virus can cause cancer.  With that in mind, let’s get back to your intractable situation.

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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…)

In my undergraduate years I lived in Las Vegas, and I often guest spoke to classes and groups about transgender issues.  One of the things I would often discuss was hate crimes.  I had statistics on other affected groups, and the rate at which they were victims of hate crimes.  But the number of people who fell victim to hate crimes based on gender identity always surprised people, zero.  There was no such thing as a hate crime against someone for their gender identity. 

On Wednesday October 29, 2009 President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  After 10 years of disagreements over the bill, this new federal hate crimes act affords protections based on someone’s actual or perceived sexual orientation and/or gender identity. 

Over the last 10 years there have been various barriers to the final passage.  The bill made it through the House of Representatives in April.  However, to get it through the Senate, Democrats attached this bill to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, a $680 billion defense bill.  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102804909.html) (more…)

A recent NY Times pair of articles focuses on the human, medical, and social costs of implanting multiple embryos via IVF and IUI, resulting in a spike in both multiple births and a litany of health risks to these babies. The articles, and ensuing barrage of public comments, can be read here: “The Gift of Life, and Its Price,” “Grievous Choice on Risky Path to Parenthood.” In IUI, parents who conceive multiples also face the decision of whether to terminate some fetuses using the procedure termed “selective reduction”. IUI is much cheaper than IVF, and more readily covered by insurance, but the chance of success is lower and ability to control multiples non-existent.

The most startling assertion in the IVF article was an analysis by reproductive health experts and providers explaining the financial and business motivations on providers to disregard medical guidelines by implanting more embryos than may be safe for mom or her babies. Fertility practices want to boost their success rates and attract clientele in a highly competitive and lucrative medical field, and parents apparently think that implanting more, or rejecting selective reduction in IUI, will secure greater chances of a viable pregnancy and satisfy their emotional or religious needs to a degree that makes the risks worth taking. If the underlying reason for the increase in multiple implantations and subsequent births is really a symptom of our profit-based medical system, some suggest we utilize insurance schemes as a way to address this issue. If insurance companies are required to cover IVF, whereas many now only cover IUI, they could regulate the financial incentives by only reimbursing doctors for single implantations. (more…)

At Comic Con this year, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane revealed that Fox would not be airing an episode of the new season focused on abortion.  As previous references to abortion on the show have been in line with the taste and sophistication that we have come to expect from Family Guy (read: sarcasm), we probably aren’t missing much. However, the uproar that has been raised about Fox’s censorship has brought has called attention to the relative dearth of portrayals of abortion in the media. The website for a documentary called “The Abortion Diaries” has a by-no-means comprehensive list of choice stories in U.S. media.  Especially in recent years, it seems that a show will either have a character consider an abortion then back out at the last minute (sometimes with an accompanying miscarriage to avoid actually having a baby on the show), or they will have the abortion and have a tremendous amount of guilt over this procedure. In the most extreme example, Jack and Bobby had a character get an abortion, and promptly die in a car accident.

For one of the best representations of choice on television, however, prospective viewers should watch one of the first. Maude, a spinoff of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, was the first primetime TV show to have the main character choose to have an abortion. The episode Maude’s Dilemma (conveniently available online) illustrates what choice was like for women before 37 years of guilt were forced down our throats. Maude wants to make the decision that is best for her family and herself. They ultimately decide that they don’t want to be parents of a teenager when they turn 60.

When CBS broadcast the episode in 1972, two affiliates decided not to run the episode, and 32 were pressured to not air the rerun the following summer. There were also 24,000 protest letters mailed in response to the two airings.  But the network still decided to air the episode. Which leaves the question, 37 years later, why is the question being stifled?

-Jake Johnson

Last week, like many San Franciscans, I got geared up for a weekend full of LGBT Pride activities, culminating in a Sunday festival in the streets of San Francisco. 

The week before Pride I spent the weekend in New York, and made a point of visiting the Stonewall Inn, the site of the start of the famous Stonewall Rebellion 40 years ago.  In the 1960’s in New York, most gay bars were unable to obtain a valid liquor license, as licenses could be denied to establishments that would allow immoral behavior (such as homosexuality).  Gay men and lesbians would have to approach a peep hole, and the bouncer would have to decide based on their appearance whether they were gay and allowed in; of course they would also have to appear straight enough to avoid harassment on the way to the bar.  Raids were a regular part of patronizing a gay bar, and arrests were more likely if you were dressed in drag (guy or girl drag).  On July 28, 1969 Stonewall Inn was raided, and someone hit back, starting an incredible rebellion against the police who had for so long been oppressing queer folks.  A year after the Stonewall Rebellion, New York and Los Angeles held the first ever gay pride parades. 

Stonewall Inn is currently adorned in old photos of champions of the early gay rights movement.  It was the first time in my life that visiting a bar gave me goose bumps, and recounting the experience makes me want to cry.  It is a truly incredible experience to be in a place that you know began the movement for rights that you now enjoy. It was moving to know that without those who fought before us in this very bar, my whole life would be different. 

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