Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law

Notes

303 ChaPtEr 1 1. We would like to thank Nancy Naples for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. The California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in In re Marriage Cases in 2008. However, later that year, the voters of California passed Proposition 8, a referendum that attempted to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. Proposition 8’s passage throws In re Marriage’s effect into doubt. As of this writing, LGBT groups have mounted a legal challenge to Proposition 8. 2. Even today,while de jure segregation has been ruled unconstitutional,children in the United States still attend largely segregated schools (Kozol 2005),and the Supreme Court has recently drastically limited the availability of race-based plans to ameliorate those conditions . 3. As of this writing, same-sex couples are allowed to marry only in the states of Massachusetts , Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and Maine. New York has decided to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. So as far as state law is concerned, same-sex couples and different-sex couples are treated equivalently in these five states. However, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and thus same-sex couples are not treated as married couples for the purposes of the more than one thousand federal laws relating to marriage (Chambers 2001). In addition, DOMA allows other states not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Thus, a same-sex marriage that is recognized by law will not be considered valid by states other than New Yorkand these five states. ChaPtEr 2 1. Ashley Currier (ashley.currier@gmail.com) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women ’s Studies at the Texas A&M University. This material is based on work supported by grants from the National Science Foundation under Sociology Program Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant No. 0601767, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality Student Research Fund, and the University of Pittsburgh International Studies Fund. I would like to thank Scott Barclay, Mary Bernstein , and Kathleen M. Blee for their helpful revision suggestions. 2. I use the more inclusive terms“biracial” and“multiracial” instead of“coloured,” though I recognize that the former terms are social constructions.“Coloured” is a“colonially created category for mixed race people” that still retains currency for Namibians (Hubbard and Solomon 1995, 165). Some members and staff of The Rainbow Project I interviewed stated that they did not like to define themselves in terms of racial and ethnic identities because it reminded them of how the apartheid regime structured social, political, and economic relations among Namibians. Despite members’ and staff ’s statements, racial and ethnic differences erupted within the organization and contributed to the creation of schisms among members, leading to the exit of some members from the organization, which I analyze later. 3. In 2004, the Namibian Parliament replaced the Labour Act of 1992 with legislation that omitted the clause prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which The Rainbow Project (TRP) did not publicly challenge (Fenwick 2005; The Namibian, May 7, 2004). I do not elaborate on TRP’s lack Notes 304 Notes to Chapter 2 of mobilization around the new Labour Act legislation because I am still investigating this. 4. I do acknowledge the importance of ongoing discussions about the globalization of Western/Northern sexual and gender identity categories and their adoption by activists in the global South (Hoad 2007; Katyal 2002; Phillips 2001). African intellectuals have crafted their own complex responses to the use of Western/Northern identity categories, which range from rejection, to wariness, to an embrace of these categories (Massaquoi 2008; Muthien 2007; Nyeck 2008). However, it is beyond the scope of this chapter to review and nuance this debate with the insight it deserves. 5. Dianne Hubbard (2000, 11), a Legal Assistance Centre researcher, supported repealing the sodomy law because the Combating of Rape Act, which was passed in 2000, “expanded the definition of rape to include forcible sodomy.” 6.“[A]ll laws in force at the date of independence remain in force until they are explicitly repealed or amended by Parliament, or declared unconstitutional by a competent court” (Hubbard 2000, 1). 7. Official discourse on toughening penalties for sodomy and expanding the criminalization of homosexuality resumed in May 2004, when Justice Minister Albert Kawana repeated that homosexuality was“illegal and criminal” during a parliamentary debate on whether to include a clause in the new Labour Bill prohibiting discrimination of sexual minorities...