Katelyn Burns, "How Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court Could Affect LGBTQ Rights"
”President Donald Trump nominated federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court on Saturday, 26 September, a choice LGBTQ rights groups are concerned could lead to a reduction in the rights of LGBTQ Americans.”
Chris Johnson, "Trump selects Amy Coney Barrett as Pick for Supreme Court"
"President Trump has selected Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate judge and a favorite among religious conservatives, as his choice to replace progressive champion Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.”
Kate Sosin, “A More Conservative Supreme Court Could Bring Drastic Changes for LGBTQ+ Americans"
”Across the nation, queer people are debating fast-tracking major life changes, expecting that rights they now have could be stripped away.”
Laura Vozzella, “Wedding Photographer, Ministries Challenge Virginia’s New LGBT Rights Law"
”A wedding photographer and a group of Christian ministries have filed separate lawsuits against a new Virginia law that bans discrimination against lesbian, gay and transgender people — and, the plaintiffs say, forces them to violate their "core convictions."”
Kate Sosin, "Trump has Gutted LGBTQ+ Rights. Could a Biden Presidency Undo the Damage?"
”Biden has promised action on LGBTQ+ issues starting on day one. But undoing four years of anti-LGBTQ+ policy may take decades.”
Frances Robles, “Soraya Santiago Solla, Transgender Trailblazer, Dies at 72"
”She was the first in Puerto Rico to change a gender designation on a birth certificate and the first there to reveal that she’d had sex-reassignment surgery.”
“Poland LGBT: Diplomats from 50 Countries Call for End to Discrimination"
”Ambassadors from around the world have called for the rights of gay and transgender people to be respected in Poland, where many towns have declared themselves free of "LGBT ideology".
Simon Murphy and Libby Brooks, "UK Government Drops Gender Self-Identification Plan for Trans People"
”Plans to allow people to officially change gender without a medical diagnosis are not being adopted by Downing Street, which is instead cutting the cost of applying for a gender recognition certificate as part of moves to revamp the process.”
Article Spotlight
David Minto; “Perversion by Penumbras: Wolfenden, Griswold, and the Transatlantic Trajectory of Sexual Privacy.” The American Historical Review, Volume 123 (4), October 2018: 1093–1121 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy027.
This article provides a queer, transnational account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1965 articulation, in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), of a constitutional right to privacy. The right in question trumped a Connecticut statute prohibiting contraceptive use even by married couples. But historians emphasizing its emergence from tort privacy and criminal procedure law have neglected an alternative source of its articulation beyond obvious jurisdictional and sexual borders: Britain’s 1957 Wolfenden Report on homosexual offenses and prostitution. The government-commissioned report famously recommended the decriminalization of gay sex on the basis of “a realm of private morality and immorality which is . . . not the law’s business.” In doing so, it not only captured the attention of U.S. homophiles and advocates, who had particular interests in overturning state sodomy laws, but also inspired transatlantic reportage and legal debate that helped to make a sexual privacy right conceptually legible and politically realizable. Elaborating the connection between Wolfenden and Griswold, this article probes the resonance between the Supreme Court’s attention to “penumbras” and the insights of queer history.
Episode Spotlight
Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.
Books
