Aleardo Zanghellini

Are Gay Rights Islamophobic? A Critique of Some Uses of the Concept of Homonationalism in Activism and Academia

The concept of ‘homonationalism’ refers to deployments of gay rights for racist and Islamophobic ends, resulting in the consolidation of more sexually inclusive, but racially exclusionary, ideas of citizenship. This article critiques some of the analyses that the concept has inspired in both activist and academic contexts. The critique concentrates on two texts, showing that they make inappropriate rhetorical moves and inaccurate or unsubstantiated claims, and that rather than unearthing structural undercurrents of racism from certain texts or events, they project such structures onto them. While the validity of ‘homonationalism’ as an analytical category is not disputed, some of its propounders assume its explanatory power to be greater than it appears to be. The implications of this critique for gay rights activism and reform are explored.

Queer, Antinormativity, Counter-Normativity and Abjection

This paper argues that Queer has distinctive and worthwhile contributions to make to both conceptual and normative inquiries in jurisprudence, but that the potential Queer has for enriching jurisprudential inquiries has not always been tapped adequately. In particular, I argue that the way in which Queer often speaks and conceives of itself, and the way in which queer theory is done has unnecessarily limited the extent and quality of its contributions to normative jurisprudential inquiries. Queer analyses, including those of queer legal theory, have sometimes tended to slip from an enthusiasm for counter-normativity — intended as a repudiation of dominant norms — to the embracing of antinormativity — intended as a renunciation of prescriptive projects. Yet, since normative commitments clearly animate the Queer project (and neither could, nor should, it be otherwise), it is a failure on Queer’s part not to acknowledge, articulate, reflect upon and interrogate its own normative commitments. The hitherto limited extent of queer contributions to normative jurisprudence is a direct result of this failure. Queer analyses of ‘abjection’ are discussed to illustrate how queer theory can be mobilised to enrich normative inquiries in jurisprudence.

Gay Surrogacy, Intentionality and Tahitian Parenting

In Australia throughout the 1980s and 1990s, anxieties about new reproductive technology crystallised especially conspicuously around surrogacy, resulting in legislative disfavour for the practice. Since then there has been a partial de-problematisation of surrogacy. This article examines the extent to which the increased legal acceptability of surrogacy in Australia has extended to its use by gay men. It also examines judicial approaches to federal provisions relating to the ascription of parental status with respect to children born into surrogacy arrangements, and reflects upon their impact on gay families. Finally, because gay surrogacy foregrounds parenting intention as the decisive ground for allocation of parental status, the article reflects upon the nature of surrogacy in the West by engaging in a comparative analysis of Tahitian parenting, which traditionally has accommodated intentional parenthood on a large scale, through the institutionalisation of adoption practices. The fact that in Tahiti sexuality- and gender-variant people may figure as adoptive parents makes the comparison all the more interesting. The article elaborates on the policy implications of the insight that this comparative analysis yields into the nature of surrogacy.

Lesbian and Gay Identity, the Closet and Laws on Procreation and Parenting

Laws that restrict access to reproductive technology and fail to adequately recognise parent–child relationships in lesbian/gay families detrimentally affect not only individual lesbians and gay men interested in parenting, but the broader lesbian and gay community. On the one hand these laws, as they currently stand in much of Australia, are complicit in maintaining the closet, inarticulation and silence as defining features of lesbian and gay lives. On the other hand, they contribute to the construction of all lesbians and gay men as non-familial and anti-family. Representations of lesbians and gay men along these lines have traditionally been central to the construction of lesbian and gay identity in Australia, as revealed by a survey of queer-themed Australian works of literature and popular fiction. If improving the status of lesbians and gay men in heteronormative societies depends on destabilising identity categories, practices that contribute to maintaining the integrity of lesbian and gay identity should be targeted for change. Reforming laws on reproduction and parenting should then be a priority for lesbians and gay men, even those who do not wish to have children.

Book Review: Sexual Intimacy and Gender Identity Fraud: Re-Framing the Legal and Ethical Debate

digging deep in classical issues of moral philosophy, but for digging in political philosophy there seems to be basically no room at all in the traditional cosmology of criminal law. When we leave moral philosophy, concerned with what we might call horizontal, interpersonal, relations, and turn to ‘vertical’ philosophy – how should society qua society relate to individuals – then all is already set, including a reduced picture where criminal law should be seen as an encounter between only two actors: the State, evil or potentially evil, and the individual, in need of protection against this State. No connections exist between them, no society creates bridges between them. If we wish – as I do – to envisage a richer potential understanding of criminal law, then this is one further area where criminal law scholars need to do a lot of work. Criminal law is political law, and very much so. To conclude, Alan Norrie’s Justice and the Slaughter Bench is highly recommended to anyone – not least criminal law scholars – who wish to gain a deeper, more complex (and more correct!) understanding of the mechanisms of criminal law. This is so for scholars working in the Anglo-American tradition where Norrie is situated but also for readers outside this tradition, in at least two distinct ways: (1) on a general level, through the deeper understanding that the book offers regarding the criminal law’s points of departure, mechanisms, ‘constellation’, and so on and (2) more on a particular level, where seeing ‘the devil in the detail’ in relation to, for example, mistaken self-defense might help to realize (a) that we somehow often have the same dogmatic problems in various jurisdictions, (b) that we might solve them in different ways, and (c) that what was already settled and clarified can, and should, be again discussed and perhaps again blurred.

Graceful Remedies: Understanding Grace in the Catholic Church's Treatment of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract This article examines advocacy of Catholic restorative justice for clerical child sexual abuse from the standpoint of feminist criminological critiques of the use of restorative mediation in sexual offence cases. In particular, it questions the Catholic invocation of grace and forgiveness of survivors of abuse in light of critical feminist concerns about the exploitation of emotions in restorative practices, especially in regard to sexual and other gender-based offences. In the context of sexual abuse, the Catholic appeal to grace has the potential for turning into an extraordinary demand made of victims not only to rehabilitate offenders and the Church in the eyes of the community, but also to work towards the spiritual absolution of the abuser. This unique feature of Catholic-oriented restorative justice raises important concerns in terms of feminist critiques of the risk of abuses of power within mediation, and is also incompatible with orthodox restorative justice theory, which, although it advocates a ‘spiritual’ response to crime, is concerned foremost with the rights, needs and experiences of victims.