Rainbow Rights: The Role of Lawyers and Courts in the Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Movement

This book describes the substantive state of the law with regard to lesbian and gay rights. It begins with some background information to put the modern fight for lesbian and gay rights in its proper historical context, then categorizes lesbian and gay rights claims into three areas-individual rights in private contexts, individual rights in public contexts, and couple or family rights thought of as private but pushing into the public sphere-that add up to a single principle: the right to be human in a modern society.

Arguing against the popular misconception that the Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement began with Stonewall in 1969, Patricia Cain shows that the first gay rights organization in the United States was formed in 1924 in Chicago. From the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles and the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco, to the formation of the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) in 1964, the book examines the ways that these early organizations, although different from today's gay rights groups, served as important contributions to the modern fight for lesbian and gay legal rights. The author looks at how the most important cases of the 1950s and '60s-the political battles over keeping gay and lesbian bars open and the fight by government employees to keep their jobs during the governmental purge of suspected homosexuals along with suspected communists during the McCarthy era-have helped to shape the state of the law today.

By exploring the background, key cases, and important issues yet to be resolved, Lesbian and Gay Rights translates the legal claims and arguments into accessible language and concepts which will be of interest not only to lawyers and law students, but also to persons not trained in the law.

An excellent resource to consider alongside the recent political histories of the gay rights movement (such as John Malone's 21st Century Gay and John d'Emilio, William Turner, and Urvashi Vaid's Creating Change), this authoritative history and critique offers a detailed examination of the legal advances made in gay civil rights in America over the past 70 years, the strategies used in court, and the alliances and shifts in public policy and opinion that have strengthened these advances. Equal attention, however, is given to Bowers v. Hardwick, Padula, and other disappointments, the better to help prepare civil rights attorneys for future battles in court. In her introduction, Patricia A. Cain tracks the meanings of the rainbow as a gay symbol, referring to Judy Grahn's research and of course to the Judy Garland song, but also quoting Gilbert Baker, the San Francisco creator of the rainbow flag, who admired the diversity of the gay community. "I mean to capture all these meanings in my title Rainbow Rights," explains Cain:

I am looking for legal arguments that are transformative, that can bring us to that place over the rainbow where even bluebirds fly, and I am not the least bit interested in legal arguments that are not capable, in the end, of bringing us all there--black, white, brown, every color, male, female, able-bodied or not, rich or poor, English-speaking or not, gay, nongay, bisexual, and transgendered.

The book is essential reading for law students, gay rights litigators, and activists. --Regina Marler