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

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.

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
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