Identity and the Case for Gay Rights: Race, Gender, Religion as Analogies

Richards has advanced the constitutional argumentation for gay rights in a profound way. He has analogized the case for gay rights to arguments for racial, gender, and religious equality and concluded that attempts to find a genetic or "innate" basis for homosexuality are no more likely to provide grounds for equality than to provide grounds for continued inequality and discrimination. Instead, Richards argues that the manner in which gay men and lesbians deal with life, love, birth, and death is ultimately a profound conscious and CONSCIENTIOUS choice that warrants the same type of respect accorded freely chosen religious beliefs.Thus, the denial of equal rights to gay men and lesbians imposes an impermissible "moral slavery" that advances a sectarian view (of the immorality of homosexuality) while dehumanizing homosexuals and relegating their conscience, feelings, and choices to a sphere of "unspeakability." This goes against the very nature of freedom of religious belief. He finds such "moral slavery" against gay men and lesbians unsupportable, in part, because it relies on inaccurate and negative stereotypes, and it applies a double standard to same-sex relations that it does not similarly apply to heterosexual relations (e.g., no compulsory procreation for heterosexual marriage).On the whole, an excellent piece of scholarly research that every lawmaker, jurist, and attorney should read to respond to the call of gay equality.