Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion as Analogies - Softcover

Richards, David A. J. A. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226712095 ISBN 13: 9780226712093

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2000

Synopsis

How should we chart a course toward legal recognition of gay rights as basic human rights? In this enlightening study, legal scholar David Richards explores the connections between gay rights and three successful civil rights movements—black civil rights, feminism, and religious toleration—to determine how these might serve as analogies for the gay rights movement.

Richards argues that racial and gender struggles are informative but partial models. As in these movements, achieving gay rights requires eliminating unjust stereotypes and allowing one's identity to develop free from intolerant views. Richards stresses, however, that gay identity is an ethical choice based on gender equality. Thus the right to religious freedom offers the most compelling analogy for a gay rights movement because gay identity should be protected legally as an ethical decision of conscience.

A thoughtful and highly original voice in the struggle for gay rights, David Richards is the first to argue that discrimination is like religious intolerance-denial of full humanity to individuals because of their identity and moral commitments to gender equality.

About this title

Review

Central to David Richards's elegant and provocative Identity and the Case for Gay Rights is the injustice of what he calls "moral slavery". This concept describes the cultural construction of stereotypes that dehumanise the affected group and are rationalised in the context of historical structural injustices. The burdens moral slavery places on an individual's identity formation are similar to those associated with discrimination on the basis of race, gender and religion, and are similarly unconstitutional and inhumane. Richards finds the analogy to religious toleration most apt and useful as a model for those struggling for recognition of gay rights. One of the strongest points here is that such an approach neatly sidesteps the biological reductionism that shadows women's rights and race-based rights, and that could attach to gay rights if the "gay gene" theory becomes the dominant theme in mobilisation around the issue. By aligning gay rights most closely with religious liberty and other First Amendment values such as free speech and association, Richards is able to preserve both the ideas of identity and choice: like spirituality, sexual orientation is part of who you are and a matter of individual conscience.

This is a beautifully written and powerfully argued piece of scholarship from a highly regarded and prolific constitutional philosopher. Though a slim volume, the book contains historical analysis of case studies that is sophisticated and challenging, as well as a prescription for a model that finds "homosexual" to be a suspect classification. It's intelligent reading not only for those interested in gay rights but also those who follow the civil rights fortunes of other minorities. --Julia Riches

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226712095
• ISBN 13: 9780226712093
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 246