Law 792: Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and the Law

What is the law’s role in both perpetuating and eradicating injustice against sexual minorities (lesbians, gays, bisexual, and asexual persons) and gender minorities (non-cisgender persons)? This weekly seminar will examine the complex and evolving relationships between law, LGBTQ status, and anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Across the semester, we will work through three interrelated projects: (1) Surveying the history of LGBTQ rights litigation, focusing on major cases, legal strategies, key arguments, doctrinal issues, and their sociopolitical contexts; (2) Examining how anti-equality campaigns have used the law to generate, maintain, and legitimize injustices against gender and sexual minorities, even as LGBTQ persons have used the law to pursue equal citizenship; and (3) Mapping the extra-legal ideologies, narratives, and assumptions underlying contemporary legal disputes over LGBTQ equality. We’ll complete the projects by working through key flashpoints, including sex-segregated facilities and athletics, same-sex marriage, bans on military service, healthcare access, and religious exemptions from antidiscrimination protections.

Assigned materials will include legal opinions, appellate records, oral histories, newspaper coverage, scholarship from other disciplines, and a wealth of archival resources — mainly, private letters, political ephemera, and several now out-of-circulation anti-LGBTQ propaganda films. And although the voices of those with arguably the highest stakes in the debates we examine will be centered — LGBTQ persons — a range of opinions and viewpoints will be considered.

Sequence and Prerequisites: None

Evaluation:   Paper