Sexual Orientation And The Law

This looseleaf treatise explains the affect of the law on gay and lesbian clients in the areas of employment discrimination, civil rights, family law, immigration, criminal defense, and a wide variety of other areas. A collection of problem solving strategies, techniques, and materials are included in the work.

This book gives an overview of how the laws of the time affect lesbians and gay men in how they go about their lives.

This book identifies, analyses and discusses the nexus of legal issues that have emerged in recent years around sexuality and gender. It audits these against specific human rights requirements and evaluates the outcomes as evidenced in the legislation and caselaw of six leading common law jurisdictions. Beginning with a snapshot of the legal definitions and sanctions associated with the traditional marital family unit, the book examines the subsequently evolving key concepts and constructs before outlining the contemporary international framework of human rights as it relates to matters of sexuality and gender. It proceeds by identifying a set of themes, including the rights to identity, to form a family, to privacy, to equality and to non-discrimination, and undertakes a comparative evaluation of how these and other themes indicate areas of commonality and difference in the approaches adopted in those common law jurisdictions, as illustrated by the associated legislation and caselaw. It then considers why this should be and assesses the implications.

"Human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are at last reaching the heart of global debates. Yet 78 states worldwide continue to criminalise same-sex sexual behaviour, and due to the legal legacies of the British Empire, 42 of these - more than half - are in the Commonwealth of Nations. In recent years many states have seen the emergence of new sexual nationalisms, leading to increased enforcement of colonial sodomy laws against men, new criminalisations of sex between women and discrimination against transgender people. [This book] challenges these developments as the first book to focus on experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) and all non-heterosexual people in the Commonwealth. The volume offers the most internationally extensive analysis to date of the global struggle for decriminalisation of same-sex sexual behaviour and relationships."--Abstract, website.

This book is the first to examine sexual orientation from the viewpoint of international human rights law. It does not simply `create' a platform of rights and argue for their `introduction' in human rights law. Rather, it examines how extant international norms should be construed to include rights against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including rights of privacy, equality, speech, expression, and association. It raises questions of cultural relativism, religious faith, social science, and legal theory. It will be of interest to international jurists, human rights organizations, gay rights organizations, constitutional scholars, and anyone interested in expanding the role of international human rights law as a formidable adversary of persecution and discrimination throughout the world.

In Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination Holning Lau offers an incisive review of the conceptual questions that arise as legal systems around the world grapple with whether and how to protect people against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

How human rights principles, like the right to gender identity, freedom, integrity and equality, respond to the concerns of different groups of adults and children who experience gender harm due to the binary conception of sexuality and gender identity is the overall theme of this book. The Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity are analysed in the light of the dynamic jurisprudence of different human rights treaty bodies. Whether and how the status quo of gender duality is reproduced, in spite of international law’s growing recognition of the multiplicity of sexualities and gender identities, is discussed. How transgender men, in countries that permit legal gender change, have been successfully prosecuted for gender fraud by female partners claiming to be unaware of their gender history is given attention. While human rights discourse related to LGBTI persons so far has been moulded on the experiences of adults this book gives voice to the concerns of gender-non confirming children. The jurisprudence of the Child Rights Committee, with focus on the complex social and legal issues faced by gender non-confirming children, is addressed. Through narratives, that give voice to these children’s experiences, the book demonstrates how the legal gender assigned at birth impacts on their feeling of recognition, self-confidence and self-respect in the private, social, and legal spheres. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

Law, Religion and Homosexuality is the first book-length study of how religion has shaped, and continues to shape, legislation that regulates the lives of gay men and lesbians . Through a systematic examination of how religious discourse influences the making of law – in the form of official interventions made by faith communities and organizations, as well as by expressions of faith by individual legislators – the authors argue that religion continues to be central to both enabling and restricting the development of sexual orientation equality. Whilst some claim that faith has been marginalized in the legislative processes of contemporary western societies, Johnson and Vanderbeck show the significant impact of religion in a number of substantive legal areas relating to sexual orientation including: same-sex sexual relations, family life, civil partnership and same-sex marriage, equality in employment and the provision of goods and services, hate speech regulation, and education. Law, Religion and Homosexuality demonstrates the dynamic interplay between law and religion in respect of homosexuality and will be of considerable interest to a wide audience of academics, policy makers and stakeholders.