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.

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.

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.

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.”