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Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
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Elizabeth Glazer’s article Sexual Reorientation,
newly published in the Georgetown Law Journal, claims that
antidiscrimination law ought to distinguish between an individual’s general
orientation (the sex toward which an individual is attracted most of the time)
and specific orientation (the sex of one’s actual partner).When only general orientation is protected,
then those whose general orientation is ambiguous, such as bisexuals, are
unjustly denied legal protection.Law
ought to protect those whose status and conduct are not identical.Discrimination on the basis of specific
orientation should be recognized to be a kind of sexual orientation
discrimination.
Glazer is right about the
pathologies of existing law, and her article deserves the attention that it has
already gotten.The introduction of her
proposed distinction into the set of operative legal categories would indeed
patch a hole in the law’s protection of sexual orientation.
I comment on her piece in the same
issue.I have one reservation.I think that the law ought to be spending
less rather than more time figuring out what anyone’s sexual orientation is.It could do that by focusing its attention
elsewhere.Specifically: it could notice
that discrimination against gay people, bisexuals, and anyone else who fails to
make the approved gender-specific choices of sexual partners is sex
discrimination, which is already barred by the Fourteenth Amendment and the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.