Symposium: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, & the Constitution: The Precarity of Justice Kennedy\u27s Queer Canon

This essay gives a brief overview of the legal and normative of impact of Justice Kennedy’s Queer Canon, a series of four LGBTQ cases written by Justice Kennedy over nearly two decades. The pro-LGBTQ outcomes in the Queer Canon cases made Justice Kennedy a hero to many LGBTQ people. It then explores Justice Kennedy’s fifth, and final, LGBTQ opinion, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. That case, which held that a traditional Christian baker would prevail on his First Amendment Free Exercise challenge to a state public accommodations law, was not the finale hoped for by the LGBTQ community. The essay next asks and answers the question: What will a post-Justice Kennedy Court mean for LGBTQ people and the 25 years of constitutional progress reflected in his Queer Canon? Through a comparative analysis of the Court’s two post-Justice Kennedy decisions, Bostock v. Clayton County and Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Justice Kennedy’s Queer Canon, and his opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop, this essay contends that the progress made during the Justice Kennedy era is a fragile progress, one that is under threat by the current Court

Fueling the Terrorist Fires with the First Amendment: Religious Freedom, the Anti-LGBT Right, and Interest Convergence Theory

This article argues that there is a connection between formal equality for LGBT Americans and the United States’ foreign policy and national security interests. It makes that connection utilizing Professor Derek Bell’s interest convergence paradigm. It argues that the new agenda of the American Religious Right is one that seeks to assert quasi-theocratic and anti-Establishment positions in litigation as well as in its promulgation of anti-LGBT laws. This agenda is cloaked in the garb of “religious freedom,” but the Religious Right’s definition of “religious freedom” is one that runs counter to our long-standing understanding of that principle as one that rests on religious pluralism. The interests of the national security and foreign policy communities converge with those of the LGBT community because of the commonalities between the Religious Right and the extremist Islamic terror groups that United States has been fighting against since the 9/11 attacks. Both groups share similar theocratic and quasi-theocratic sensibilities; both share a common religiously based disdain or hatred for LGBT people that fuels their efforts to deny LGBT people civil rights. These similarities mean that the United States must take similar positions vis-à-vis both groups; failure to do so will render the United States hypocritical on the world stage. To maintain its own moral and diplomatic authority when spreading messages of equality, democracy, and freedom, the United States must live those values within its own borders by rejecting the Religious Right’s new efforts to carve out quasi-theocratic zones of exemptions from antidiscrimination laws and to enact explicitly anti-Establishment, anti-LGBT laws. Failing to condemn the anti-Establishment agenda of the Religious Right also threatens national security. Inconsistency between what the United States says regarding freedom and democracy abroad, and what it actually does at home, provides fodder for terrorist groups to rally their followers and harm the United States and its citizens. Interest convergence between the U.S. foreign policy and national security communities (securing U.S. foreign policy and national security interests) and the LGBT civil rights movement (formal equality) provides an opportunity for a unique coalition to coalesce for LGBT civil rights protections

Straightwashing the Census

This Article examines the “straightwashing” of the census through the “Identity Undercount”—the failure of the state to collect sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) population data in government surveys such as the Census. The Identity Undercount, while counting the literal bodies of LGBT people, erases their lived identity. For many in the LGBT population, their lived identity and reality is one of poverty and powerlessness, a reality contrary to the widely accepted narrative that the LGBT population is more affluent and powerful than the rest of the population. Because federal and state governments rely on population data to drive policy decisions about the allocation of $675 billion in federal funds, most of which is apportioned to anti-poverty programs, the straightwashing of government data does real harm to LGBT people in poverty. If policymakers cannot see the problems, they cannot craft meaningful policy solutions or modify existing policies to meet the needs of the LGBT population. Because data are tied to resource allocation, the Identity Undercount results in resource deserts where LGBT people do not get critical and necessary services. The Article argues that the government should collect SOGI population data and that the near-complete failure to do so makes the state an active participant in creating and sustaining institutionalized poverty for LGBT people

From the Mattachine Society to Megan Rapinoe: Tracing and Telegraphing the Conformist/Visionary Divide in the LGBT Rights Movement

From the beginning of the LGBT civil rights movement, there has been an intracommunity debate concerning strategies and tactics to effect legal and social change. On one end of the spectrum, the lesbian and gay organizations of the 1950s—the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis—advocated an assimilationist strategy that sought tolerance rather than full acceptance and integration. The tactics to affect this strategy are best described as conservative and conventional—to look and act as “straight” as possible in order to convince courts, legislatures, and the public that lesbians and gay men should be left alone rather than fired from their jobs and criminalized for their intimate conduct. On the other end of the spectrum, the protesters at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, advocated for liberation along many axes—gender, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, class. The Gay Liberation Front, inspired by the Stonewall Riots and formed shortly thereafter, embodied this liberation-based strategy. Its tactics are best described as confrontational, intersectional, and anti-assimilationist. This Article will refer to these two approaches as Conformist and Visionary

Biogenesis and maintenance of cytoplasmic domains in myelin of the central nervous system

Myelin is a multi-lamellar membrane structure, produced by oligodendrocytes which are special glial cells, that myelinate axons in the central nervous system (CNS) (Aggarwal, Yurlova, & Simons, 2011; Vassall, Bamm, & Harauz, 2015). The main role of these tightly-packed and stable structures is to electrically insulate the axon. During the biogenesis of myelin, two processes have to be coordinated. At first, the incorporation of myelin adjacent to the axon at the innermost tongue is accompanied by the lateral expansion of newly formed layers. At the same time, a complex system of cytoplasmic channels (CPCs) is formed, enabling membrane trafficking from the cell body to the leading edge in thin-caliber-axons of the immature optic nerve (Snaidero et al., 2014). These channels are known in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) as Schmidt-Lanterman Incisures, but have not been yet established in the CNS (Gould, Byrd, & Barbarese, 1995; Small, Ghabriel, & Allt, 1987). The development of an improved protocol for high-pressure freezing (HPF), allowed us to better preserve the native myelin ultrastructure close to its native state. Using HPF and freeze-substitution for transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we were able to visualize a system of cytoplasmic (myelinic) channels within myelin surrounding large-caliber axons in the CNS for the first time. In line with their presence in developing myelin lamellae, here, we present how a system of interconnected CPCs is organized in mature myelin of axons with different calibers. Beside the morphological analysis of these channels by TEM, we combined different in vivo and in vitro approaches to describe the biogenesis, molecular structures, and possible roles of CPCs. We elucidated a mechanism that regulates the formation and determines the molecular organization and their involved key components. In this study, we identified 2’,3’-cyclic-nucleotide 3’-phosphodiesterase (CNP) as an essential determinant in generating and maintaining cytoplasmic domains within compact myelin sheaths. Our observations provide evidence that the protein-protein interaction of CNP and filamentous actin (F-actin) results in the formation of a stable structure that helps to keep opposing myelin leaflets separated. The close interaction of CNP and F-actin prevents membrane compaction that is exercised by the classic myelin basic protein (MBP)