Couplings: Civil Partnership in the United Kingdomстатья из журнала
Аннотация: They provide the inspiration for my consideration of the United Kingdom's Civil Partnership Act 2004, which became law on November 18, 2004 (with the first civil registrations taking place on December 21, 2005).It is fitting, in my view, to analyze the British "solution" to same-sex relationships in a symposium for Ruthann Robson and her scholarship.Throughout her work, she displays sensitivity to national variations in the way in which sexualities are regulated, and her scholarship is informed by her knowledge of many legal regimes.Furthermore, the British approach to partnership should be of interest to an American audience because it is explicitly designed as a "new" legal institution for same-sex couples.Formally, it is not marriage, and this raises the interesting issue of the applicability of Ruthann Robson's concerns about marriage to regimes of legal regulation of relationship more broadly.In this article, my theoretical grounding can be located within "queer legal theory." 8It may appear counterintuitive to argue that the Civil Partnership Act is a text conducive to an analysis grounded in queer theory.After all, it is now a virtual cliché that the term "queer" is associated with a politics of radical sexualities, transgression of heterosexual norms, and a challenging of sexual binaries and traditional notions of family and kinship.Queer theory, in support of these politics, has paid much attention to subjecting texts-literary, legal, political-to a deconstructive analysis, seeking to uncover the incoherence of the hetero/homo binary at the heart of the construction of those texts specifically, and of sexual identities more generally.Of course, other theoretical and political movements have engaged in similar strategies both before and after the advent of queer politics and theory.However, I would argue that queer theory provided a fresh articulation at a particular historical moment, the impact of which should not be minimized.It is also important that queer theory emerged in response to the right wing, homophobic politics of the 1980s, when homosexuality was readily associated with discourses of disease, degeneration, 8 See, e.g.,
Год издания: 2005
Авторы: Carl F. Stychin
Источник: CUNY Law Review
Ключевые слова: Conflict of Laws and Jurisdiction
Другие ссылки: CUNY Law Review (PDF)
CUNY Law Review (HTML)
City Research Online (City University London) (HTML)
CUNY Law Review (HTML)
City Research Online (City University London) (HTML)
Открытый доступ: bronze
Том: 8
Выпуск: 2
Страницы: 543–543