Poland and Latvia are both signatories to a number of treaties that are supposed to protect the rights of their gay and lesbian citizens, but as this report documents, both countries have failed to uphold their treaty obligations on a number of occasions. The report begins with a discussion of the relevant provisions of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, to which both Poland and Latvia have acceded.

The author describes the considerable growth of China’s gay community in the last six years. Although the road toward full protection remains long, he is heartened by recent changes. He discusses policy developments relevant to the gay community in China over the last two decades, and he places them in a larger context of similar legal developments relating to gender law, antidiscrimination law and policy, and society in general. He then discusses the potential for future changes.

A rare empirical analysis, this article draws upon files of the Crown Prosecution Service in order to study the subset of murders of gay men in England and Wales. Bartlett concludes that gay sexual homicide can and should be considered as a coherent and discrete set of cases. They are both demographically, and in terms of the dynamics between the protagonists, different than heterosexual sexual murder.

Although restricted in the sample size -- the author surveyed members of the"Rainbow Network," consisting of LBGT employees of the Department for Constitutional Affiars, yielding 97 completed surveys -- the data offer an initial foundation upon which to construct a representation of the "day to day experiences of LGBT individuals in the British courts or legal system."

New Zealand decriminalized homosexual intercourse in 1986, yet some judicial opinions in New Zealand still contain language that reinforces and repeats negative stereotypes about homosexuality. This article examines the effect this language has on rights claims made by homosexuals. It argues that such language undermines sexual rights claims made by gay New Zealanders.

This article covers the adoption controversy from the Catholic, English perspective. Echoing similar domestic reforms such as that in Washington, D.C. (http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/same-sex_marriage_law_forces_d.c._catholic_charities_to_close_adoption_program/), Catholic adoption agencies in England were compelled to consider a response to a new requirement that they not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The author considers three broad strategies: Rejection of the new regulation, and withdrawal from the work of adoption (i.e., the route chosen by the Catholics in Washington, D.C.), acceptance of the requirement, or by an "arms-length agreement" that would remove "Catholic" from the name of the adoption organization, and severe direct administrative control by the diocese. She further reviews some implications for this latter choice in canon law.

Based upon the author’s Clarendon Lectures in Law delivered in October 2005, this book analyzes the swift social changes from 1967, when the problem before the UK was whether to decriminalize homosexual conduct, to 2005, when Parliament passed the Civil Partnership Act that provided for the formal legal recognition of same-sex relationships. The first of three chapters sketches the Act’s historical background, and the second analyzes its specific provisions. The third chapter seeks to place these problems into a broader sociolegal context. As illustrated by prominent cases from other English language jurisdictions included in extensive appendices (comprising three-quarters of the book’s content), heretofore change on this front in the UK has been comparatively less driven by court decisions than by legislative enactments. With the recent creation in 2005 of a UK Supreme Court, however, this may change, raising new philosophical questions concerning the proper relationship between the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive branches of government.

Family and domestic relations in Israel are governed by religious courts, which not only make no allowances for same-sex unions, but oppose them. This article offers an impressive review of the legal options available to gay and lesbian couples. The overall lesson is that, within the confines of the theocratic institutions, a secular judiciary has operated with sensitivity and flexibility, but any ultimately resolution must come from the Knesset.

Leung v. Secretary for Justice [HCAL 160/2004], Hong Kong’s first gay rights case, declared the four provisions in the Crimes Ordinance involving homosexual conduct to be unconstitutional. This article calls for the affirmation of the court’s original ruling which relies on an equality analysis. It also rejects the critique that the court should have used a privacy analysis. The Court’s decision is analyzed in detail.

Part of a symposium entitled, “Too Pure An Air: Law and the Quest for Freedom, Justice, and Equality,” this article offers an in-depth analysis of how treatment of gays by new members of the European Union—many from former communist regimes with a negative record on this issue—impacts their admission process. The author recommends that “the EU should seriously consider allowing gay rights to play a more prominent role in the course of the preparation of future enlargements.”

With a forward by Martin Cauchon, the Canadian lawyer, politician and former Liberal Party of Canada cabinet minister who argued before the cabinet in favor of gay marriage, this book outlines the road to achieving same-sex marriage in Canada. It recounts the development of arguments, strategies and tactics used by both sides.

Observing that for a provincial opinion such as Halpern v. Canada, 65 Ontario Rep. 161 (2003), there is "no higher honour ... than such lofty acknowledgment that it exists" as being criticized in Justice Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, 593 U.S. 558, 573 (2003), the author uses that opportunity for a deeper scrutiny from the perspective of comparative constitutional law. Problems arise, he finds, in studying issues of constitutional law "in isolation from their enculturation in private law," with the result that too much of the credit goes to constitutional texts rather than to the private law that "informs the attitudes of the judges who construe constitutional rights."

This report is the result of a study conducted by the Institute for Conflict Research. It was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) and the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (OPONI). Questionnaires, focus groups, small group interviews and individual in-depth interviews were used to study 233 lesbians, gay men and bisexual’s attitudes and experience with the police in Northern Ireland. The findings include statistics on contacts and perceptions of the police as well as recommendations on reporting, training, recruitment and outreach.

"Rights talk," writes this author, are a double-edged sword. Those claiming rights (in this case, for same-sex couples to adopt) are often met those opponents also claiming rights (Catholic adoption agencies seeking an exemption from a requirement to consider same-sex couples). Such conflicts show the inherently rhetorical nature of the claim to rights, which constitutes Stychin's primary point. The idea of the right, from this perspective, one upon which much of gay activism depends, from this perspective becomes less of a trump than merely one device among many, a perhaps necessary but not sufficient claim in the public marketplace since it is so easily parried by countervailing claims framed in equivalent terms.

This brief article offers a cogent summary of the legal status available to same-sex couples in Hungary. Since 1996 the "laconically" regulated domestic partnerships were opened to gay relationships. Registered partnerships became available in 2009, which offer many of the rules of marriage to apply to same-sex couples as well.

The author discusses the context of a possible sexual orientation discrimination ordinance in Hong Kong. She concludes that the real danger in protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination is in the way such prohibitions would restrict expressions of anti-gay prejudice. Such expressions must be protected, she feels, because they are often supported by “scientific findings showing the harms of homosexual conduct not only to the society but also to those engaging in such practices.”

The author considers the problem of ascertaining, from the particular view of Israeli law, parenthood of a child who was conceived by the egg of one lesbian partner being carried to term by the other. Because current law "cannot provide an adequate response," she proposes legislative changes that will allow recognition "through appearance before a registry official." Until such time, however, the Family Court will have jurisdiction over this question.