Faculty Scholarship
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
June 2010
Abstract
FROM DIVERGENCE TO CONVERGENCE? A COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW ANALYSIS OF LGBTI RIGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF RACE AND POST-COLONIALISM James D. Wilets ABSTRACT This article discusses the consequences of slavery, colonialism, racism and religious hegemony to better understand contemporary developments in comparative and international law with respect to extending legal equality to sexual minorities. The arguments for cultural relativism in the context of LGBTI rights are shorn of their power when it is understood that much of the contemporary opposition to gender nonconformity and homosexuality comes not from indigenous practice but from largely Western phenomena. Many of the world’s societies are simply remedying the damage wrought by the advent of historically aberrational virulent homophobia associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In large sections of the United States, religions developed and promulgated a particularly vicious hierarchical view of racial and gender relations to theologically justify the institutions of slavery and apartheid. This article refutes the idea that LGBTI rights are a linear development flowing from an enlightened Western socio-political approach to human rights, and in fact argues that this approach undermines both domestic and global battles for LGBTI rights.
Publication Title
ExpressO
NSUWorks Citation
James Wilets,
FROM DIVERGENCE TO CONVERGENCE? A COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW ANALYSIS OF LGBTI RIGHTS IN THE CONTEXT OF RACE AND POST-COLONIALISM
ExpressO
(2010),
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/law_facarticles/473