Links democracy with the process of overcoming severe social inequality, rather than with ideal forms of political debate.

Links democracy with the process of overcoming severe social inequality, rather than with ideal forms of political debate.

Links democracy with the process of overcoming severe social inequality, rather than with ideal forms of political debate.

Timothy Macklem argues that the heart of discrimination lies not in unfavorable comparisons with the treatment and opportunities that men enjoy, but rather, in a denial of resources and opportunities that women need to lead successful and meaningful lives. This work promises to be a milestone in the debate about gender equality and will interest students and professionals concerned with legal theory and gender studies.

Showing how the present is shaped by the past, the author of "Gay New York" explains why the campaign for same-sex marriage has become the most explosive issue in the long struggle for gay rights.

When “rights” go wrong. Does gay marriage support the right-wing goal of linking access to basic human rights like health care and economic security to an inherently conservative tradition? Will the ability of queers to fight in wars of imperialism help liberate and empower LGBT people around the world? Does hate-crime legislation affirm and strengthen historically anti-queer institutions like the police and prisons rather than dismantling them? The Against Equality collective asks some hard questions. These queer thinkers, writers, and artists are committed to undermining a stunted conception of “equality.” In this powerful book, they challenge mainstream gay and lesbian struggles for inclusion in elitist and inhumane institutions. More than a critique, Against Equality seeks to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility! "In an era when so much of the lesbian and gay movement seems to echo the rhetoric of the mainstream Establishment, the work of Against Equality is an important provocation and corrective.... I hope this book is read widely, particularly by the people who will most disagree with it; in the tradition of the great political pamphleteers, this collection should spark debate around some of the key issues for our movement." —Dennis Altman, author of Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation "Against Equality issues a radical call for social transformation. Against and beyond the "holy trinity" of pragmatic gay politics—marriage, militarism, and prison—the queer and trans voices archived in this collection offer a radical left critique of neoliberalism, capitalism, and state oppression. In a format accessible and enlivening, equally at home in the classroom and on the street, this book keeps our political imaginations alive. Prepare to be challenged, educated, and inspired." —Margot Weiss, author of Techniques of Pleasure

“Diversity” is a recent construct in our equal protection jurisprudence, but during its relatively short existence it has garnered many critics. Even critical race scholars, the most vocal proponents of aggressive civil rights and equal protection enforcement, are skeptical about “diversity,” to say nothing of its many opponents. Critiques of “diversity” as vague, an alter ego of affirmative action, and an inferior method of achieving the remedial purposes of equal protection abound. These critiques, I posit, result from a lack of awareness of the realities of “modern diversity practice” and its aspirational aims, which are readily distinguished from old forms of affirmative action, and its associated remedial aims. The fundamental distinction between diversity and affirmative action is the difference between the desire to achieve some general good versus the need to remedy a discrete harm. This inability to distinguish between modern diversity practice and affirmative action conceptually is compounded in the law by the inadequacy of our equal protection jurisprudence to account for any non-remedial purpose expressed by the Equal Protection Clause. The primary aim of this article is to elucidate the “diversity interest” as recognized in our equal protection jurisprudence through the lens of modern diversity practice. Viewing the constitutional diversity interest from the perspective of modern diversity practice reveals a fundamental distinction between diversity and affirmative action that has confounded legal scholars and jurists alike. This distinction exposes the deficiency of our equal protection jurisprudence grounded solely in a remedial principle of equality to appropriately define or adequately accommodate the distinct aspirational aims of the new diversity interest. Modern diversity practice offers insight and analogy for how our equal protection jurisprudence should respond to this deficiency by embracing the broader equality aim of democratic pluralism.

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals.