European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears another second-parent adoption case

Last week the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard the case of  X. & Others v. Austria, its second case on the availability of second-parent adoption.  A webcast of the oral argument in the case -- translated into English -- is available on the ECHR website here. I wrote about the hearing in Gas & Dubois v. France last April; that case has yet to be decided.  In Gas & Dubois, the child was

European Court of Human Rights hears appeal of lesbian couple denied second-parent adoption in France

A French lesbian couple, denied a second-parent adoption of the daughter born to one of them using donor insemination, has taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The couple, Nathalie Dubois and Valerie Gas, began living together in 1989, and their daughter, Alexandra, was born in 2000. Alexandra was conceived in Belgium because assisted reproduction is not available to a

LGBT Rights in Latin America

The Inter-American Dialogue today held a program called "LGBT Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean: Why Now and What Next?" The featured speaker was Javier Corrales, an Amherst College professor and co-editor of The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America: A Reader on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights. The book is billed as the first English language reader on LGBT politics in

Lesbian couples as joint legal parents in Europe

I'm still excited about our new law in DC that makes both lesbian partners the parents of the child that one of them gives birth to if her partner consented to the insemination with the intent to parent or if the couple is married or registered domestic partners. If you missed the details, check this post.I've gotten an update from Dutch law professor Kees Waaldijk on the status of lesbian

LGBT rights -- and comments on Israeli-Palestinian conflct -- at Tel Aviv conference

Earlier this week, Tel Aviv University was the site of the 9th annual queer studies conference An Other Sex. I was honored to deliver a keynote on my book.Israel has a distinctive legal regime within which to consider same-sex relationships. There is no civil marriage in Israel, only religious marriage. This keeps many straight couples from marrying because, for example, a Jew cannot marry a

2 Mums and a Dad...and the law in Australia

I've been in Australia for more than a month now, on a Fulbright Specialist grant, teaching, lecturing, conferring, etc at two universities -- University of Technology Sydney and University of Melbourne. Of all my duties here, one of the most fun was my participation today on a panel after a screening of the film 2 Mums and a Dad. Australian filmmaker Miranda Wills followed a lesbian couple and

Hungarian Court rejection of different-sex registered partnership is the wrong result

A year ago, the Hungarian parliament passed a law permitting same-sex and different-sex couples to register as domestic partners. Yesterday its Constitutional Court threw out that law. English language press reports say that the court found it unconstitutional to give different-sex couples the option of registered partnership instead of marriage. Such an avenue, it said, "downgrades" in the