Final Paper in FYS 6

This is where you will be able to find links to the final papers of all your classmates in FYS 6! The links should also be available on the Students tab as well.

• Eloise Fairbrother : "The Watchful White Eye"
• Paul Finn : "Final Paper"
• Liv Gilbert-Adler : "Winning the White House with Hate"
• Quin Lewis : "Marriage and Law"
• Zach Lipsett : "Final Paper"
• Sam Miller : "Final Paper"
• Karen Matsuoka: Final Paper
• Olivia Paredes: Final Paper
• Katie Patton :"Strict Scrutiny and Marriage Laws"
• Rosemary Peters : "Pansexuality"
• Hannah Rivera : "Final Paper"
• Ray Stein-Alvarado : "Final Paper"
• Carter Vaughn : "Final Paper"
• Alex Wells : "Marriage isn't the problem"

You need to have posted a draft of your final paper to your personal blog by 11:30am Monday December 4 AND communicated the URL to me. 

Then I will link this blogpost to the post on your blog containing the paper. During the week students will be reading each other's papers and revising them to include a citation to one other student's paper in the final version of their paper, which they post to the exact same place as their first draft (the URL must remain the same or the links will be broken). 

November 18: Important Date in LGBTQ History

 

November 18 is an important date in LGBTQ History! Early in the week we discussed the landmark case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in class (see lecture notes). Goodridge is famous for being the first time a state supreme court (in this case the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court) ruled that laws preventing same-sex couples from accessing the rights and responsibilities are unconstitutional. In a 4-3 decision issued on November 18, 2003, the court said that "The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens." In a ``baller" move the Court issued a stay on their decision for 180 days, having it go into effect on May 17, 2004, which is easily recognized as the 50th anniversary of the day that Brown v Board of Education was issued by the United States Supreme Court. Brown was a unanimous decision ruling that "separate but unequal" is unconstitutional, thus signaling the end of the period of "Jim Crow" and legally sanctioned explicit racial discrimination in the united States. So even though May 17 2004 gets more attention as the first day that same-sex couples could get legally married in the United States, none of that would have been possible without the events of November 18 2003.

Another significant event happened on  that same day: November 18, 2003 but thousands of miles away in the United Kingdom. This was the day that the repeal of the infamous "Clause 28" went into effect in England and Wales (it had been repealed in Scotland a few years before). Clause 28 (or sometimes Section 28) was an anti-gay measure championed and enacted by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. in the late 1980s The actual text said that local governments "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" and that they could not "promote the teaching [...] of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." Section 28 was in effect from 1988 through 2003 through most of the United Kingdom and its effects were cultural as well as legislative. Multiple LGBT groups were founded in the UK to fight the measure, including Stonewall and OutRage! For more info about the history of LGBTQ rights in the U.K., read this.

Tip of the hat to lesbian activist Dana Rudolph, who has been blogging at Mombian since 2005!

SCOTUS To Consider Transgender Bathroom Ban (& More!)

 Openly gay legal reporter Chris Geidner is reporting that the Supreme Court of the United States will be considering a number of important cases for trans equality in the 2023-2024 term.

Here are some of the issues which the highest Court in the land will be deliberating on in the not too-distant future regarding transgender rights:

Bathroom bans

In addition to the Idaho case at the Ninth Circuit, however, a case out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit could actually make bigger headlines. The Martinsville school district in Indiana, in a petition filed by Paul Clement, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the matter in a case challenging the district’s ban.

Gender-affirming care bans

In short, whether it comes quickly or slightly less quickly, state bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors will be headed to the Supreme Court within the coming year. (Note also that Florida’s ban — and litigation — also includes restrictions on adult care, as detailed in the recent class certification in a challenge to the ban there.)

Sports bans

The final major area of transgender-related litigation making its way through the courts are sports bans. And, on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held oral arguments over West Virginia’s law banning trans girls and women from girls and women’s school sports teams.

Anti-drag laws

In short, while anti-drag laws are unlikely to make their way to the Supreme Court’s docket this term, there will be a ruling on the scope of Florida’s injunction pending appeal sometime in November. Depending on how that’s resolved, moreover, it could tell us some information about how the court is looking at these efforts.

This is just another example of the ongoing nature of the fight for LGBT equality occurring in the courts, even in the post-Obergefell era.

October 11 is National Coming Out Day!

National Coming Out Day is October 11th!

This year is the 35th anniversary of the first National Coming Out Day (NCOD), which occurred on October 11 1988, which itself was the first anniversary of the 2nd National March on Washington held in 1987 (Wikipedia). In recent times, NCOD has been a project of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ political advocacy organization in the United States. 

The logo was specifically created for NCOD by openly gay artist Keith Haring.

In more recent years, there have been debates in the LGBTQ community about the utility of the event. For example, last year the Washington Blade published an article that discussed how for different segments of the LGBTQ community (especially those who had other marginalized identities) coming out can have complications.

Here are some discussion questions for the comments:

1. What do you think about this idea (that coming out may be more difficult for different segments of the LGBTQ community) included in the Washington Blade article? 
2. What are your thoughts about the phrase "inviting in" versus "coming out"?
3. Do you think NCOD still serves a useful purpose?
4. When was the first time you heard about NCOD?

Prime Minister of Andorra Comes Out As Gay

Andorra is a tiny country (of 80,000 people) nestled between Spain and France in the Pyrenees mountains.

Monday September 11, the 43-year-old prime minister of Andorra, Xavier Espot Zamora, head of the government since 2019, revealed that he is gay in an interview with a news outlet. The headline says "El presidente de Andorra sale del armario: «Yo soy gay y nunca me he escondido» which I translate as  "The president of Andorra leaves the closet: 'I am gay and I have never hidden myself." In Spanish, the text of the report in The Observer is:

El jefe del Gobierno de Andorra, Xavier Espot, ha hecho pública su homosexualidad: «Yo soy gay y nunca me he escondido». Las declaraciones han tenido lugar en durante una entrevista en la radio pública del país, en la que el líder andorrano aseguró que nunca había hablado de su orientación sexual porque no le habían preguntado, pero que «no debe suponer ningún inconveniente», según recoge el diario Nació Digital.

«Estoy encantado de que pueda servir a jóvenes que están en una situación difícil», ha añadido. Espot ha explicado, además, que nunca ha sentido discriminación por su orientación sexual. Sin embargo, ha remarcado que no puede negar que otras personas sí que hayan vivido este tipo de situaciones por el mismo motivo. «Aún no hemos llegado a la plena igualdad de género», lamentó, por lo que ha defendido la necesidad de impulsar unas políticas públicas que combatan la LGTBIfobia.

This is translated (by Google) as:

The head of the Government of Andorra, Xavier Espot, has made his homosexuality public: “I am gay and I have never hidden myself.” The statements took place during an interview on the country’s public radio, in which the Andorran leader assured that he had never spoken about his sexual orientation because he had not been asked, but that “it should not cause any inconvenience,” according to the report.

“I am delighted that I can serve young people who are in a difficult situation,” he added. Espot has also explained that he has never felt discrimination due to his sexual orientation. However, he stressed that he cannot deny that other people have experienced this type of situation for the same reason. “We have not yet reached full gender equality,” he lamented, which is why he has defended the need to promote public policies that combat LGTBI-phobia. 

Espot Zamora becomes one of a handful of openly LGBTQ heads of state in the world. According to JoeMyGod, the others are: Luxembourg, Serbia, and Latvia. Wikipedia has a longer list (and distinguishes between heads of the government and heads of state). In the United States these are the same person (President of the United States) but in many other countries they are often different roles occupied by different people. For example, in England King Charles is head of state but Rishi Sunak is the head of government.

Do you know of any openly LGBTQ political figures in the USA?  There are currently three (3!)  openly LGBTQ governors in the United States. Name them in the comments!

"Free Papers" by Wideman

 

I love having Daniel Wideman's "Free Papers" as the first reading in the Queer 3.0 class because of the lyricism of the language and how it sets the town for what the themes of the class will be. The "Justice/Just us" homonym is catchy but meaningful at the same time.

The piece allows us to use what will become our standard mode of textual analysis, with a clear Thesis, determining Audience, analyzing the Method/Rhetorical Strategy, the author's Objective (reason for writing the piece) as well as their Assumptions/Perspective.

As a logophile myself, I actually enjoy the fact that Wideman uses numerous "five-dollar words" like the following:

• admonish
• ameliorate
• antipode
• facile
• furtive
• hegemony
• moniker
• mundane
• obviate
• ossify
• Pavlovian
• pernicious
• predilection
• Prometheus
• schadenfreude

In the comments, feel free to define these words (and add them to the Vocab page)

My favorite part of "Free Papers" is towards the end, where the writing becomes almost poetic, this excerpt:

A life free of scripture and stricture---each man free to write his own script, invent his own life. Part of the power of authorship is the power to write your own rules and enforce them, to harness the power of the word to military might. Thus the primal acts that inscribed you as a citizen of the world (an autonomous author) were voting and bearing arms. The right to write and, if pen did not prove mightier than the sword, he means and privilege to tote both and draw either indiscriminately. We enjoyed no such powers. We could not officially script our lives, so we developed the most sophisticated sense of subversive narrations inn the world: We acquired an endless fascination and proficiency with the insurrectionary properties of language.

What's your favorite part of "Free Papers"? 

First But Not Last Blog Post!

Hello class!

This is the first blogpost of the class, but hopefully not the last!

I want to welcome you all to this group blog for #FYS6: (Queer 3.0) LGBTQ Rights in the Internet Era, my FYS class for Fall 2023 at Occidental College. The course description is: 

This course is about the past, present and future of the fight for equal citizenship for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, commonly known as the “gay rights movement.” A fundamental tenet of the course is the idea that gender, race, sex and sexual orientation (among other aspects of one’s identity) are social constructions. We will analyze the historical treatment of LGBTQ people throughout history with a specific focus on the Internet era: the time period from the Internet’s birth in the 1960s to the present day. We will examine the historical, cultural, religious, legal and societal significance of marriage and deploy this analysis as a lens to view the myriad ways that civil rights and fundamental freedoms are often mediated by identity and contingent on circumstance. Texts in the course will include academic articles, court cases, legal briefs, popular media, fiction, blogs, videos, tweets and images. We will use networking tools and social media (e.g., Slack, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Blogger/Wordpress, etc.) to facilitate students’ development as both consumers and producers of intellectual, academic material. The ability of students to produce and critique online content is a learning outcome of this class. No previous knowledge of any particular internet tool is required.

Feel free to use this space (and your own personal blogs) to highlight and comment on issues that involve LGBTQ rights that occur in the media or news during the semester. One of the central outcomes of the class is for you to see each other as producers, and not just consumers, of intellectual content.