Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America - Softcover

Nava, Michael; Dawidoff, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312117647 ISBN 13: 9780312117641

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1995

Synopsis

Why should Americans who are not gay care about gay rights? In Created Equal, Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff argue that the movement for gay equality is central to the continuing defense of individual liberty in America. Beginning with an examination of the determined assault on gay issues by the religious right, the authors show how this sectarian movement to legislate private religious morality into law undermines the purpose of American constitutional government: the protection of the individual's right to determine how best to live his or her life. The book starts from the premise that gay and lesbians are, first and foremost, American citizens, and then looks to what rights belong to every individual American citizen, arguing from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Addressing their argument to the great majority of their fellow Americans, Dawidoff and Nava emphasize that what is at stake is not the fate of the gay community, but the future of constitutional principle and the rights of free individuals in American society.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff are the authors of Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America.

From Kirkus Reviews:

This slender volume is a cogently argued call for all Americans to support the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for equal rights under the law. The pairing of lawyer/novelist Nava (The Hidden Law, 1992, etc.), and Dawidoff, a historian (Claremont Graduate School), is a fortuitous one. The book opens with a brief glimpse of two weeks of demonstrations that took place in 1991 in Los Angeles in protest of California Governor Pete Wilson's veto of a gay-rights bill. The authors then state a series of basic premises that undergird the book's thesis that gay rights are in the best interest of all Americans. They proceed to delineate an America in which there is a rising tide of violence against gays and lesbians and in which the basic civil rights of gays and lesbians are often unprotected in the courts. Systematically, they lay out the causes of legalized homophobia and the manner in which the religious Right, playing on public fear of homosexuality, has spearheaded an attack on basic constitutional guarantees of privacy and equal protection under the law. Although their argument is ultimately not based on either of two current theories of the formation of sexual orientation--choice and genetic determinism--Nava and Dawidoff are emphatically on the side of the latter. Finally, they state their own agenda: legalized same-sex marriage, the right to serve in the armed forces, the right to privacy, and an end to discrimination in housing and employment. A thoughtful and passionate essay whose message is clear: ``Everyone's freedom suffers when individual liberty is denied to a class of citizens.'' -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0312117647
• ISBN 13: 9780312117641
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 167