This course will expose students to federal, state, and local regulations that have a differential impact on homosexuals and members of other sexual minorities. Such regulations cut across a number of traditional legal categories, such as constitutional law, family law, property law, immigration law and anti-discrimination law. The course is also intended to provide students a specific context in which to study the interrelationship between social change and legal developments. The course will also provide a practical guide to the representation of sexual minorities by offering creative approaches available to potential clients whose needs are  unrecognized under current legal paradigms. While primarily a course in United States law, the course will also offer comparative, international, and scientific perspectives where appropriate.

A. Introduction and overview: history, lesbian and gay identity, comparison with gender and other minorities, the closet and visibility, the morality debate, and medicalization.

B. Criminalization of same-sex sex (from Loving v. Virginia to Hardwick v. Bowers to Lawrence v. Texas) -- privacy and equal protection analysis.

C. Citizenship, political participation, right of association and expression, and equal protection analysis (Romer v. Evans).

D. Gay and transgender youth and education, free expression and association in high school, on campus, and beyond.

E. Private employment discrimination, current law, local and state protection, self-expression, and the perception of others.

F. Religion and LGBT rights: protected employment discrimination, the First Amendment, faith-based initiatives, freedom of association and social groups.

G. Public employment discrimination: the military and the construction of manhood; other government employees and the question of security.

H. LGBT immigration issues: asylum, PPIA, marriage-based waivers, current recognition of non-marital relationships for foreign national couples, and the gay bar and the HIV bar.

I. Jurisprudential overview: feminism, gender identity and sexuality, anthropology, and "queer theory."

J. Adult relationships and family: recognized partnerships, a contractual approach, "marriage," and the constitution of DOMA.

K. Gay parenting, surrogacy, custody issues, and adoption.

L. Special issues growing out of unrecognized gay relationships, focusing on tax and estate planning.

M. Discrimination in the legal system: the "gay panic defense," hate crimes.