ON THE first of November 1953 the editor of theLondon Sunday Timesdirected the attention of readers to “A Social Problem.” The specific topic was male homosexuality. The problem was said to be evidenced in a dramatic growth in the number of prosecutions and convictions of men for buggery, gross indecency, and the offence importuning of male persons. The editorial noted that trial agendas were said to be “packed full of cases of indecent assault and gross indecency between men.” The judiciary had spoken of the shock and indignation of having to deal with “gang[s] of homosexuality.” In response...

In many Western societies, same-sex erotic activity is problematized in moral, legal, and medical discourse at several sites, such as education, health, employment, and sexual activity itself. In that final locus it is described as “homosexuality,” a word of recent provenance linked to a concept that is equally recent.¹ During earlier times there were “homosexual acts” that did not establish “homosexuality” but were positioned and divided under various other defining heads, such as sodomy, acts against nature, intimate friendships, or the legitimate engagement in particular sensual acts. Such acts were incidents within an economy of pleasures, not distinguished from other...

As they have done for many years, in 1994 lesbians and gays¹ once again took to the streets of New York City to mark yet another Gay Pride Day. In some respects the 1994 parade was indistinguishable from those of years past. The usual array of leather men, queens, butches, and femmes were in evidence, and once again the same political tensions concerning the purpose of the march and the direction of the movement threatened to install divisiveness in the place of unity without ever actually succeeding in doing so. For two reasons, though, the 1994 queer extravaganza was not...

These are the words of Judge Edward M. Kaufmann inThomas S. v. Robin Y., a case in which a gay sperm donor (Thomas S.) sought an order of filiation and visitation, a challenge successfully resisted by the biological mother and her lesbian partner, the child’s co-mother. Judge Kaufmann’s characterization of how Ry, the child at issue in the case, identified her parents and sibling laid much of the groundwork for his decision that Thomas S. should be prevented from obtaining a declaration of paternity. His words demonstrate the potential that lesbian motherhood holds for challenging the biological ties that...

There is a children’s book entitledHeather Has Two Mommies.It is the story of a little girl whose parents are a lesbian couple—Kate and Jane; Kate is a doctor, and Jane is a carpenter. Kate and Jane are blissfully happy, but they want to have a child in their lives. Following a joint decision, Jane becomes pregnant through alternative insemination, and, soon thereafter, Heather is born. Heather regards each woman as her mother: they are called “Mama Kate” and “Mama Jane.” However, when she goes to nursery school, she discovers, apparently for the first time, that she is...

Lesbian legal theory is appearing in academic literature in Canada, the United States, and Britain. This relatively new area of scholarship includes the work of some legal theorists who are attempting to develop a lesbian equality jurisprudence. This involves an investigation into the nature of lesbian oppression, how it is experienced by lesbians, and how it can and should be framed in legal terms. It also involves a critical examination of the legal instruments and processes that have been used in attempts to redress lesbian oppression, an evaluation of the efficacy of existing legal strategies, and an exploration of the...

No history is purely descriptive. Even the most committed phenomenologist must make decisions about what will be reported, about what counts as relevant, and about what will be treated as insignificant. Moreover, the very process of compiling information—particularly conducting interviews with participants in the historical processes under investigation—can alter the way in which participants in those processes remember and perceive the events about which they are questioned. Lastly, there is the problem of historical causality—determining the relation of one event to another—and the inescapable, subjective element in determining whether event A did in fact “cause” event...

In March 1991 the British press exploded with a story that was to occupy the mass media for days. It concerned the provision by clinics of anonymous donor insemination services to women described as virgins. At the controversy’s outset, it was unclear whether these so-called virgins were heterosexual or lesbian. Nevertheless, it did not take long for the specter of lesbian mothers to be invoked.

The virgin births outrage is one of several recent British legislative attempts to statutorily fortify a sexual hierarchy of families. These provisions are located at the interface of the public and private, ideological and cultural...

Those of us engaged in the practice of lesbian legal theorizing have been disinclined to address the multitude of issues provoked by the lesbian as criminal defendant. In the explicitly sexual context, the dominant assumption has been that lesbians were rarely, if ever, prosecuted for sexual crimes; I have elsewhere argued that this assumption is mistaken.¹ In the nonexplicitly sexual context, two contradictory assumptions coexist. First, the pairing of the words “lesbians” and “criminal” is metaphorical at best,² with lesbians inhabiting a gendered realm of privatized tranquillity. Second, the pairing of these terms is stereotypical at worst, with lesbians being...

It is difficult to describe the endless, relentless impact AIDS has had on the lives of gay men. It is now hard to recall how we lived before AIDS; many gay men today have never known a time free of a constant threat of illness and death. Although AIDS continues to profoundly affect gay men, along with the many lesbians and others who joined in the struggle against this disease, in the Western world the impact and meaning of AIDS now extend beyond the gay and lesbian communities. In short, the conflation of gay and lesbian activism with AIDS activism...