| The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire: Liberal Resistance and the Bloomsbury Group Contributor(s): Richards, David A. J. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1107037956 ISBN-13: 9781107037953 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $85.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2013 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Human Rights - Political Science | Civil Rights |
| Dewey: 323.326 |
| LCCN: 2012049384 |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.15 lbs) 280 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book argues that there is an important connection between ethical resistance to British imperialism and the ethical discovery of gay rights. By closely examining the roots of liberal resistance in Britain and resistance to patriarchy in the United States, this book shows that fighting the demands of patriarchal manhood and womanhood plays an important role in countering imperialism. Advocates of feminism and gay rights (in particular, the Bloomsbury Group in Britain) play an important public function in the criticism of imperialism because they resist the gender binary's role in rationalizing sexism and homophobia in both public and private life. The connection between the rise of gay rights and the fall of empire illuminates larger questions of the meaning of democracy and of universal human rights as shared human values that have appeared since World War II. The book also casts doubt on the thesis that arguments for gay rights must be extrinsic to democracy, and that they must reflect Western, as opposed to "African" or "Asian," values. To the contrary, gay rights arise from within liberal democracy, and its critics polemically use such opposition to cover and rationalize their own failures of democracy. |
Contributor Bio(s): Richards, David A. J.: - David A. J. Richards is Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law and criminal law. He also teaches a seminar, �esisting Injustice', with NYU University Professor Carol Gilligan, and the seminar �etributivism in Criminal Law Theory and Practice' with the psychiatrist James Gilligan. Richards is the author of seventeen books, including, most recently, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchal Resistance and Democracy's Future (with Carol Gilligan, 2009) and Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law: Obama's Challenge to Patriarchy's Threat to Democracy (2010). Two of his books were named best academic books of their years, he was Shikes Lecturer in Civil Liberties at the Harvard Law School in 1998, and he has served as Vice President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. |