Professor Hull

        Spring, 2012 (3 credits) Self-Scheduled Final Exam

    One of the cutting edge areas of civil rights law in the twenty-first century is also one of the oldest in American legal history: the sexual and personal expression civil rights of LGBT individuals. The legal basis for nearly every discriminatory law challenging the LGBT community today can be traced to the colonial American laws (brought over from Great Britain) criminalizing “sodomy” and regulating cross-gender modes of dress. A long struggle to overcome the colonial sodomy statutes only triumphed in 2003 with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision the case Lawrence v. Texas . But the nefarious legacy of the sodomy laws extends to many other areas of law with which we have had to grapple: the history of homosexuals serving in the military and their legal right to do so; the challenge to obscenity laws applied to homosexual political pamphlets, poetry and fiction; the right to teach in public schools; to adopt children; the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace and public accommodation; the right to same-sex marriage. This course will follow the many threads of this legal odyssey from the seventeenth continuing into the twenty-first centuries. Course materials will include 2 or 3 inexpensive books, web links and xeroxed materials available through the bookstore. Students will be required to participate in class discussions.