Andersen considers the history of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the development of the “legal opportunity structure” in the U.S. , and their impact on significant cases in the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement. She provides an in-depth analysis of sodomy-related cases in the periods leading up to Bowers vs. Hardwick [478 U.S. 186 (1986)], and then from Bowers to Lawrence v. Texas [539 U.S. 538 (2003)], and analyzes why the later case was successful when the earlier one had failed. She considers changes in the social milieu, the structure of the Supreme Court, and legal criticism of the Bowers decision that were all part of the “legal opportunity structure” that contributed to Lambda’s success in the Lawrence case. The later chapters of the book focus on anti-gay initiatives and same-sex marriage, and explore how the political landscape, or “political opportunity structure” may differ from the legal opportunity structure.

Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, consistently offers what is lacking in many of the most hotly debated questions impacting LGB persons: empirical data. Here she examines the "double edged sword" of two such questions. The first is the role of LGB persons in the national economy. On the one hand is a popular stereotype that -- because we typically lack offspring and are two-salaried households -- we have more disposable income and are generally more affluent than heterosexuals. This is counterbalanced by concerns that this fact earns us resentment. In actuality, the stereotype is false, with gay men in couples earning an average 13% less than married heterosexual men. Similarly, despite the broad benefits of marriage, negative impacts can arise in the context of divorce, poverty ("state spending on public assistance would drop considerably if same-sex couples were allowed to marry or to enter civil unions"), and the income tax's marriage penalty. Overall, the article's disparate observations fail to coalesce into a sharp point, but the data bits are valuable in themselves.

While conservatives tend to merge law and morality, liberals prefer to maintain a distinction between the public activity of politics and the private sphere of morality. Ball suggests that pro-same-sex-marriage liberals should not blush to incorporate moral arguments into their briefs. The alternative, "neutral" position Ball characterizes as either "unappealing or unrealistic." While Ball may be right that individual justifications for favoring gay marriage may include moral premises, that is still far from concluding that a democratic State should likewise select for special favor one moral viewpoint from among all those espoused by its citizens. For example, his Proposition #1 ("Same-sex sexual relationships are as morally good as different-sex relationships"), which he takes as unexceptional, is exactly what conservative moralists would point to as being the primary disagreement. One cannot employ this premise without telling everyone who disagrees that their worldview is erroneous, which is precisely the kind of acquiescence our form of government should not be demanding. Governmental neutrality on moral questions may be flawed, but, given our prior political commitments it may remain the only posture consistent with our values.

This article discusses the experiences of sexual minority individuals in their interactions with the courts, both as employees and as court users. The article reviews four empirical studies of LGBT individuals and the courts, one from California, one from New Jersey, and two from the United Kingdom. The differing viewpoints of heterosexual vs. homosexual respondents are also discussed. In general, a significant portion of the survey respondents felt that openly gay employees and court users received unfair treatment in a number of contexts, although this response was stronger among homosexual respondents than among heterosexual respondents.

The intent of this sizable review aims to provide a detailed snapshot of the state recognition of same-sex relationships as it existed at the time of writing. Toward this end, the treatment is comprehensive, beginning with an historical overview including Baehr v. Miike, 1996 WL 694235 (Haw. Cir. Ct. Dec. 3, 1996), the case that started the ball rolling. The authors/editors then discuss those states with anti-same-sex marriage constitutional amendments (Part II), those with a statutory ban (Part III), those that legally recognize same-sex couples (Part IV), and, in Part V, the federal issues such as DOMA and the Federal Marriage Amendment. While review articles such as this are quickly outdated (the California story ends, for example, well before the state supreme court overturned its ban and the reactionary Proposition 8 which followed), this piece strikes the right balance between length and detail.

Gabilondo begins this discourse-grounded piece (that many readers will find to be opaquely abstract) with an extended fantasy narrative depicting the life of “Joe,” a secretly heterosexual male trying to exist in a “homonormative world” of gay supremacy. Joe’s tale allows the author to introduce the concept of “heterosexual interpellation.” Interpellation refers generally to “the notion that systems of ideas are the medium through which a person finds one’s sense of self and comes to recognizes oneself as an emotionally and politically sentient subject.” In this context, “Heterosexual ideology interpellates gays through legal disabilities and other limits on freedom,” with the result that “insult is the main vehicle for” self-recognition by gays. Gabilondo pushes for an “‘interpellative advocacy,’ a commitment to using crushed expectations—as reconstituted through libidinal rage—to further the ‘coming to speech’ of a sexual minority outside of the heterosexual matrix.

Protection is meaningless, the author tells us, “if we are restricted from acknowledging our particular membership within” the category: “If a light-skinned person of color does not speak, she may be presumed to be white.” The paradigmatic example of such self-identifying speech is the coming out of the GLBT person. The author inventively builds upon the foundation of linguistic philosopher J.L. Austin’s three speech functions: “‘persuasive,’ in attempting to affect the thoughts or feelings of the listener; ‘creative,’ in engendering a promise, a bet, or another social contract or obligation; and ‘descriptive,’ in stating a neutral or verifiable fact.” Hanna argues that gay self-identifying speech possesses all three of Austin’s functional dimensions. Devoting sections to each, she concludes that the third, descriptive function of coming out speech, is the least explored, and offers a firmer basis for courts to protect such speech, something they have not always been willing to do (e.g., Rowland v. Mad River Local School District [470 U.S. 1009 (1985)]).

Mezey’s book provides a fairly comprehensive overview of a number of areas of gay and lesbian-related litigation over the past 50 years. The initial chapter provides a general history of gay rights activism, and then is followed by chapters dealing with equality and privacy rights, same-sex marriage, military service, and employment discrimination. Each chapter provides a synopsis of the major cases that have been brought in each area of the law, and explores the progress (or lack thereof) in each. Also included at the end of each chapter is a brief discussion of survey results measuring popular support for the issues discussed in the chapter. Mezey uses this data to discuss whether the judges’ decisions that have been discussed in the chapter can be considered counter-majoritarian or not. She finds that although state supreme court cases may seem to be counter the to majority’s will in a given locale, they often match the majority view in the nation as a whole. In some areas, specifically involving military service, she finds that the courts’ unwillingness to invalidate anti-gay legislation is actually contrary to the feelings of a majority of U.S. citizens.

In this extended essay, the author speaks to the animus underlying the debates about homosexuality, rather than to the substance of those debates. Rancorous public disagreements can appear on their face to be about the law, but in reality they concern something else entirely. "Arguments about gay rights, same-sex marriage, and related issues are not merely arguments informed by religious values; they are arguments about the nature of religion itself." Michaelson raises no objection to having civic policy dictated by private religious dogma (in other words, he is no Rawlsian!); instead he hopes that a later-stage "post-mythic" religiosity will be more tolerant of homosexuality than is the current majority's "mythic" religion. He advises on one hand avoiding debates that triggers the entrenched "mythic" opposition to homosexuality as a symbol of chaos (i.e., argue for jobs rather than marriage, perhaps), and on the other to seek to nurture religious development in others through "sustained personal encounter." He is unclear how long gays' rights must wait until Christians in sufficient number achieve this evolved status. Many will find his outlook insightful at a personal level, but possibly problematic as criteria for how the legal rules should be set for all persons, including those who do not share the author's religious beliefs.

In 1920 Harvard College venomously pursued students it thought were homosexual. It convened a secret court, "tried" about twenty students, and expelled seven undergraduates. Targeting both gays and friends of gays, Harvard was unsatisfied with expelling the men, but afterward displayed a "relentless commitment to hunting these men down and sabotaging their efforts to finish school, find work, and self-actualize." The harassment continued for decades, as when Harvard tried to derail the 1953 elevation of Joseph Lumbard to the federal appeals court. Several committed suicide as a result. Ronner situates this horrific episode alongside the Salem witch hunts, and the post-9/11 climate to show that "the malevolent forces that propel witch hunts are omnipresent and can spring into action at any time."

The author makes “two basic points in support of the idea that we should be attentive to, but should not overstate, the institutional dimensions of social change” on gay issues that courts are often accused of promoting. She first examines what exactly “social change” means in this context. If it “means moving the proverbial hearts and minds” of the public, then what she terms “law skepticism” is probably the most defensible position: “the sensibility that anti-discrimination laws cannot themselves change people’s attitudes about the groups such laws” protect. Schacter next inquires into “the significant variability in the realm of gay rights.” In her four-square analysis, both courts and legislatures have each produced both positive change and backlash, and thus it is simplistic to portray any specific relationship as predominating. Rather than seeking universal explanations, she proposes that our attention focus on learning whatever lessons can be gleaned from particular episodes. Transcript of symposium presenters discussing these issues follows the article.

Skow draws out the inherent tensions in Missouri law that, on the one hand, in 1999 included sexual orientation in its Hate Crimes Act, yet in 2004 passed a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Besides the seeming general inconsistency concerning the state’s attitude toward GLBT persons, the author theorizes that the two taken together “may provide a basis for an Equal Protection challenge if the same-sex marriage prohibition amendments inspire the animus that hate crime statutes seek to prevent.”

A transcript of proceedings moderated by Chai Feldblum, offers a casual conversation on "morality in the marriage equality debate and the question of its role in conceptualizing same-sex marriage." An obvious participant is Carlos Ball, who authored a book on precisely this topic. Fellow discussants include Suzanne Goldberg, Mark Chopko, Amy Wax, and Jonathan Rauch. All participants support basing social policy on the perceived morality of same-sex relationships, a position that, on its face, would delight conservatives firmly convinced that morality provides a clear, negative response to the question of same-sex marriages. The discussion would have benefited from a distinction between ethics and morality, for while it is fruitless (as Rawls argued) to try to base public policy on individual conceptions of the good, that does not mean that laws cannot be based on some recognition of duties owed to other citizens (e.g., the equality principle that Ball would avoid).

For those of a certain age, Anita Bryant encapsulates the tenor of an era, the cusp between the days when homosexuality was a disgraceful secret, and the emergence of the possibility of gay identity as a positive aspect of the healthy individual. This issue presents the proceedings of the Nova Southeastern University’s Eleventh Annual Leo C. Goodwin, Sr. Symposium, in which, from the perspective of thirty years later, the impact of her “crusade” is examined. Chairs Anthony Niedwiecki and William E. Adams recount the basic historical events, from Bryant’s successful 1977 efforts to repeal Dade County’s antidiscrimination ordinance that include protections for sexual orientation, to examples of the echoes of that campaign still impacting lives today. Suzanne Goldberg focuses “on the lack of legal justification for laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation,” forcing courts to rely instead on “intuition and morals based justifications.” David Mixner spoke on his many memories of activism, while Matt Foreman writes that, despite the significant advances in many areas of social progress, “we remain stagnant in our moral and political attitudes toward LGBT people and change is desperately needed.” The final symposium presenter, Gene Robinson, whose ordination as an openly gay Episcopal Bishop open schism in that denomination, discussed the misuse of Biblical passages by Christian opponents to support their antipathy toward LGBT people. As for Bryant, while her movement left enduring scars on Florida law, she fared poorly. Rejected by her fundamentalist base after her 1980 divorce, she suffered a financial setbacks resulting in bankruptcies in 1997 and 2001. While no longer seeking the spotlight, recent interviews have indicted no softening of her antigay beliefs.

This article discusses the nature and the role of compromise and incrementalism in the LGBT rights movement. Wilson asserts that horizontal rather than vertical compromise is the only morally and pragmatically acceptable method of compromise. Compromise is vertical if it leaves out the interests of a movement’s well-defined constituent groups (e.g. compromise legislation that excludes gender identity protection). A compromise is horizontal when legislators or activists scale back the breadth or depth of their demands (e.g. civil unions versus full marriage recognition). This article provides good blueprint for strategies for the LGBT civil rights struggle. Wilson opts for a clear and concise style, instead of using the jargon-laden language that often characterizes writings on theory. Sometimes, the footnotes could use more specific citations to cases, but overall the article contains good citations to caselaw and other writings on theory and movement methodology.