Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion as Analogies [Paperback]

David A. J. Richards (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226712095 | ISBN-13: 978-0226712093 | Publication Date: January 15, 2000 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 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

From Library Journal

As a legal scholar, Richards (law, New York Univ.) demands that the public understand gay rights as a key element of basic human rights. He further asserts that discrimination based on gender, religion, or race is similar to discrimination based on sexual orientation. Richards examines the link between gay rights and the movements for blacks' civil rights, feminism, and religious freedom. Ultimately, the author believes, the best criterion for legal acceptance of gay rights will be based upon those principles issued in the argument for religious toleration under the parameters of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A thought-provoking study of the relationship of gay rights to the Constitution and human-rights endeavors. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
-Michael A. Lutes, Univ. of Notre Dame Libs., South Bend, IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 241 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226712095
• ISBN-13: 978-0226712093
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #882,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Case for Gay Rights, August 9, 2000

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"walt21012" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion as Analogies (Paperback)

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.