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Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion as Analogies | 
| Author: David A. J. Richards
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $22.00
Rating:  1 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 241
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0226712095
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.90664
EAN: 9780226712093
ASIN: 0226712095
Publication Date: January 15, 2000
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
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 dehumanize the affected group and are rationalized in the context of historical structural injustices. The burdens moral slavery places on 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 mobilization 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 African Americans, women, and religious minorities. --Julia Riches
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Brilliant Case for Gay Rights August 10, 2000
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
Richards has advanced the constitutional argumentation for gay rights in a profound way. He has analogized the case for gay rights to arguments for racial, gender, and religious equality and concluded that attempts to find a genetic or "innate" basis for homosexuality are no more likely to provide grounds for equality than to provide grounds for continued inequality and discrimination. Instead, Richards argues that the manner in which gay men and lesbians deal with life, love, birth, and death is ultimately a profound conscious and CONSCIENTIOUS choice that warrants the same type of respect accorded freely chosen religious beliefs. Thus, the denial of equal rights to gay men and lesbians imposes an impermissible "moral slavery" that advances a sectarian view (of the immorality of homosexuality) while dehumanizing homosexuals and relegating their conscience, feelings, and choices to a sphere of "unspeakability." This goes against the very nature of freedom of religious belief. He finds such "moral slavery" against gay men and lesbians unsupportable, in part, because it relies on inaccurate and negative stereotypes, and it applies a double standard to same-sex relations that it does not similarly apply to heterosexual relations (e.g., no compulsory procreation for heterosexual marriage). On the whole, an excellent piece of scholarly research that every lawmaker, jurist, and attorney should read to respond to the call of gay equality.
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