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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Is Sexual Orientation an Immutable Status or a Fundamental Choice?

Robert Wintemute

in Sexual Orientation and Human Rights

Would recognition of sexual orientation as an ‘immutable status’ provide an effective solution to the problem of public sector discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals and same-sex ... More

Would recognition of sexual orientation as an ‘immutable status’ provide an effective solution to the problem of public sector discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals and same-sex emotional-sexual conduct? In considering whether sexual orientation is immutable or a fundamental choice, one should look at the direction of a person's emotional-sexual attraction, because the direction of their conduct is almost certainly chosen. It is certainly true that many gay men and lesbian women sincerely believe that the direction of their attraction is something they did not choose and cannot change, which makes same-sex emotional-sexual conduct the only viable choice for them. Their own subjective belief in the immutability of their own sexual orientation (as direction of attraction) will often make an immutable status argument seem to them the most appealing response to sexual orientation discrimination. Is a person's choice of the direction of their emotional-sexual conduct ‘fundamental’? The first issue that arises is whether this question is to be answered under Section 15(1) or under another provision of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.Less

Legality, Reciprocity, and the Criminal Law on Pitcairn

Guest Stephen

in Justice, Legality and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Pitcairn Prosecutions

This chapter presents some arguments in favour of the defendants in the case of Steven Raymond Christian & Others v The Queen. It addresses the issue of whether there was an ‘abuse of legality’ in ... More

This chapter presents some arguments in favour of the defendants in the case of Steven Raymond Christian & Others v The Queen. It addresses the issue of whether there was an ‘abuse of legality’ in applying ‘British standards’ in imputing knowledge of the law to the defendants in spite of strong evidence that they lived within a distinctly non-British culture of sexual conduct, encouraged in the absence of law enforcement mechanisms. It identifies two ‘abuses’. First, there was a plausible argument that the British Crown lacked jurisdiction over Pitcairn, even though the strong, and prevailing, view in all Pitcairn courts was that the British Crown did have jurisdiction. Second, even if we assume British jurisdiction, it was not clear that the English criminal law was sufficiently brought to the attention of the defendants, this being the issue advanced in Christian — at all hearings — that there was insufficient promulgation of the law applying on the island.Less

The Right to Love

Barbara Alpern Engel

in Breaking the Ties That Bound: The Politics of Marital Strife in Late Imperial Russia

During the reign of Tsar Alexander III, chancellery officials demonstrated an almost obsessive concern with the sexual behavior of wives. Although officials were exceedingly cautious in their ... More

During the reign of Tsar Alexander III, chancellery officials demonstrated an almost obsessive concern with the sexual behavior of wives. Although officials were exceedingly cautious in their judgments, once they decided that a woman was sexually “immoral,” they treated her as irredeemable. This concern extended to all women, but women of the laboring classes were the primary targets, as they were deemed more prone to unruliness than their better-bred and privileged sisters. If a wife was found to have engaged in extramarital sexual relations, it served as sufficient grounds to deny her requests for separation even when every allegation against the husband proved true, or when there was compelling evidence that the conduct officials viewed as immoral had ceased. This chapter discusses how officials' stringent definition of “immorality” underwent a perceptible if subtle shift toward the end of the nineteenth century. Expanding the parameters of acceptable female sexual conduct, the shift reflected changes in popular and elite attitudes toward women's sexuality and a growing acceptance of women's capacity for self-governance and agency in the sexual sphere as in others.Less

The word on the street: Chaucer and the regulation of nuisance in post-plague London

Sarah Rees Jones

in Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads

This chapter addresses writing about the street with a particular focus on the City of London between about 1385 and 1425. Using sources as diverse as the literary works of Chaucer and the ... More

This chapter addresses writing about the street with a particular focus on the City of London between about 1385 and 1425. Using sources as diverse as the literary works of Chaucer and the proceedings of neighbourhood courts it pursues ideas about the use of the street in the creation of elemental social bonds. In particular it focuses on the window as the porous place of interaction between domestic interiors and the public street. An influential elite discourse showed a particular interest in matters of sexual intimacy. By contrast popular conversation about the street at neighbourhood level was more dynamic and developed around a pragmatic range of interests, which nevertheless provided an opportunity for political criticism of government officials.Less

Continuity and Change in American Sex-Crime Policy

in An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending

Criminal justice policy toward adult sex offenders has a powerful influence on the policies used for younger offenders in both criminal and juvenile courts, for which reason policy toward adolescent ... More

Criminal justice policy toward adult sex offenders has a powerful influence on the policies used for younger offenders in both criminal and juvenile courts, for which reason policy toward adolescent sexual conduct cannot be understood without some exposure to the approach of the criminal justice system to older sex offenders. This chapter provides a brief summary of the criminal law governing sexual conduct and recent trends in its enforcement. The first part profiles the extent of criminal justice involvement in responding to sexual behaviors and the image of the sex offender that animates recent policies. In the second section, the chapter reviews data on recent trends in enforcement and punishment.Less

The Juvenile Sex Offender

in An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending

This chapter focuses on the measurement and meaning of sex crimes committed by children and adolescents in the United States. The starting point for this analysis is not arrest statistics or survey ... More

This chapter focuses on the measurement and meaning of sex crimes committed by children and adolescents in the United States. The starting point for this analysis is not arrest statistics or survey research, however, but rather a fundamental distinction in U.S. law between minors and adults which has profound impact not only on the rate of adolescent criminal sexual conduct but on the nature of the conduct that is considered unlawful. The objective of the criminal law regarding the sexual conduct of adults is regulatory. Even at its prohibitory high watermark, Anglo-American law never sought to forbid sexual intercourse between consenting spouses, and current legal policy allows most consensual sex between competent adults. Among the 200 million persons over eighteen in the United States, there are tens of millions of acts of sexual intercourse each week, and most of these are not violations of any criminal code.Less

Introduction

Sacha M. Coupet and Ellen Marrus

in Children, Sexuality, and the Law

This book attempts to move the discourse of children and sex farther by presenting a different framing of the topic. This new framing positions children not only as objects of protection but also ... More

This book attempts to move the discourse of children and sex farther by presenting a different framing of the topic. This new framing positions children not only as objects of protection but also with agency in the context of sex and sexuality and as right holders within a broader discussion about sex, sexuality, and related aspects of gender. Indeed, children are not only exposed to sexual environments, they are engaging in sexual conduct and with sexual media in ways that have never been considered before. Thus, this book aims to promote a more enlightened dialogue on the topic of children and sex—one that invites new legal responses reflective of both children's agency and rights.Less

Legalizing Homosexual Conduct

in Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights

This chapter recounts the long and varied history of sodomy laws. The state used these laws to target same-sex consensual activity only relatively recently as part of an unprecedented repression of ... More

This chapter recounts the long and varied history of sodomy laws. The state used these laws to target same-sex consensual activity only relatively recently as part of an unprecedented repression of sexual and gender deviance that reached its apex in the middle of the twentieth century. History is of more than academic interest because the courts have looked to the historical record to support and reject claims about the constitutionality of sodomy laws. The chapter then looks at the disappearance of sodomy laws in the United States over four decades, starting in 1960. Repeal took place during two distinct periods. Mostly legislatures repealed the first group of laws in the 1960s and 1970s, and mostly courts repealed the second group after 1980. Although different institutional conditions operated in these periods, the findings are mostly consistent with the hypotheses presented in Chapter 1.Less

The Matter of Sex

Francis X. Hezel

in Making Sense of Micronesia: The Logic of Pacific Island Culture

This chapter discusses the attitudes of Micronesians toward sex. In the past, the inner circle of the Micronesian family was not a place where young people, or even their parents, could talk easily ... More

This chapter discusses the attitudes of Micronesians toward sex. In the past, the inner circle of the Micronesian family was not a place where young people, or even their parents, could talk easily about personal matters such as sex. Parents did not usually speak of sexual matters to their children, not even mother to daughter or father to son. Cross-gender discussion of this topic was even more strongly forbidden. Anything that even hinted at sexuality was suppressed within the family circle. Today, many of these old prohibitions are no longer followed. With the relaxation of taboos within the family, a more casual relationship is developing between brothers and sisters today. Indeed, cases of incest are not uncommon in the islands. This chapter also considers nightcrawling and dating among young people in Micronesia, along with sexual conduct as a family concern.Less

Family and Welfare

Brian Harrison

in Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951-1970

This chapter first considers changes in sexual attitudes and conduct, and a shift in the role of women. It then turns to changes in childhood and the evolution of public welfare and health, before ... More

This chapter first considers changes in sexual attitudes and conduct, and a shift in the role of women. It then turns to changes in childhood and the evolution of public welfare and health, before moving to old age and death. The concluding section evaluates claims that the changes discussed threatened the family's very existence.Less

Temporary virginity and the everyday body: Le Bone Florence of Rome and bourgeois self-making

Felicity Riddy

in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance

The earliest surviving representation of an English bourgeois family at prayer appears in a fifteenth-century book of hours, now known as the Bolton Hours, made for members of a York mercantile ... More

The earliest surviving representation of an English bourgeois family at prayer appears in a fifteenth-century book of hours, now known as the Bolton Hours, made for members of a York mercantile family. The family's whole prayer, cast as it is in that form of the future that imperatives bring into being opens up a space for narrative. The family is represented around the issue of sexual conduct and good name of its female members. There was more than one late-medieval discourse of virginity. On the one hand, virginity was represented as a sacred vocation that was placed highest in the triad virginity-widowhood-marriage. This way of categorizing female sexuality had been a commonplace of Christian thought since the fourth century.Less

Becoming the AIDS Scribe

Andrew E. Stoner

in The Journalist of Castro Street: The Life of Randy Shilts

Shilts joins The San Francisco Chronicle as its first openly gay reporter on the newsroom staff. Hired to cover the “gay beat” in San Francisco, Shilts also is given general assignment stories. ... More

Shilts joins The San Francisco Chronicle as its first openly gay reporter on the newsroom staff. Hired to cover the “gay beat” in San Francisco, Shilts also is given general assignment stories. Shilts coordinates Chronicle coverage of the deadly October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Newsroom colleagues overcome suspicions of the new “gay reporter” as Shilts lobbies publishers for non-discrimination policies and domestic partner benefits. Shilts picks up on rumors of a “gay cancer” affecting gay men in the Castro district. Reporting includes very first stories attempting to link exotic immune system related diseases with homosexual men in San Francisco and elsewhere. Shilts is becomes convinced the AIDS story is a major story and devotes himself nearly full-time to the subject.Less

Family, Identity, and the Individual in India

Nandita Chaudhary and Shashi Shukla

in Psychology: Volume 2: Individual and the Social: Processes and Issues

As a universal social institution, the family has always attracted much academic interest in multiple areas of study. This chapter examines the theory of family and explores family life in India. In ... More

As a universal social institution, the family has always attracted much academic interest in multiple areas of study. This chapter examines the theory of family and explores family life in India. In order to provide an account of the Indian family in its multiple manifestations with its due place in academia, a critical examination of various theoretical perspectives on family is offered. It is argued that the empirical research on Indian families as settings for the care of children—its most important function—can be used to develop a theoretical framework to study families worldwide. By applying the varieties of family structures observed, it is argued that the predominantly one-adult, one-child paradigm, which is the foundation for mainstream developmental psychology, is found in only a few families. Thus, findings of research on Indian families can inform mainstream theory and discourse about family structure and function, and make an important contribution.Less