Boston University Law Review Online
Comments on When God Isn’t Green
Sarah Schindler
Online Symposium: Jay Wexler’s When God Isn’t Green: A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 1 (2016)
First, with respect to cumulative harms, a number of legal scholars have written about the fact that individuals, and their actions, cumulatively contribute to significant environmental harms. In the book, Jay provides many examples of religious practices that have negative effects on the environment. I view this book as falling within the literature addressing what […]
Reconciling Green and God
John Copeland Nagle
Online Symposium: Jay Wexler’s When God Isn’t Green: A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 7 (2016)
One virtue of this approach is that it allows you to experience the actual places that give rise to legal disputes, rather than being limited to the stylized account offered in most judicial opinions. The experience is much richer when the author is as talented as Wexler. His reports from the friend remind us that […]
When God Isn’t Green: Some Thoughts on the Thoughts of Nagle and Schindler
Jay D. Wexler
Online Symposium: Jay Wexler’s When God Isn’t Green: A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 15 (2016)
I appreciate both Nagle and Schindler’s observations that although the contribution of religious practices to environmental degradation may be relatively small compared to other sources of contamination, such as manufacturing and transportation, the contribution may nonetheless be more important than it would otherwise seem because of the cumulative nature of environmental harms—harms that might […]
Marriage Equality and Marital Supremacy
Serena Mayeri
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 19 (2016)
The parallel between Reconstruction-era freedpeople and twenty-first century gay and lesbian Americans, as Franke is careful to acknowledge, is imperfect; it is discontinuity as much as similarity that makes the analogy fruitful. Most strikingly, the juxtaposition of these two cases spotlights how marriage equality advocates have succeeded, with astonishing alacrity, in normalizing what was once […]
Perils of Marriage and Neoliberal Politics of Care
Tamara Metz
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 25 (2016)
The rebranding and its success have much to do with the neoliberal politics of care. Specifically, same sex marriage was rebranded in the ways Franke outlines but also in the language of neoliberalism: first, there’s the emphasis on freedom: commentators noted a crucial shift on the part of major activist organizations from the rhetoric of […]
Let’s Hope They’re Right
Tracy E. Higgins
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 29 (2016)
Katherine sounds like the queer mirror image of the conservative opponent of marriage equality: Marriage equality is going to ruin it for us patriarchal, heteronormative folks happily ensconced in traditional man/woman marriages. How can we possibly continue to thrive if gay people can get married? Franke instead seems to be claiming, at times anyway: Marriage […]
Decentering Marriage Rights
Julie Novkov
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 35 (2016)
While she does not argue any direct causal or path-dependent developmental relationship between this history and the current effect of marriage equality for lesbians and gay men, Franke draws thoughtful analogies to illustrate both the negative effects that equality is already producing and to warn about other potential problems that the past history predicts […]
Rhetoric and Reality in Wedlocked
John G. Culhane
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 39 (2016)
The multiracial complexity of these families—including the children who have been adopted, often from the foster care system—presents a challenge to another of Franke’s concerns. She is unsparing in her assessment of Judge Posner’s decision in Baskin v. Bogan, in which the prolific jurist noted the potential of same-sex marriages to increase the […]
Who Are the People in Your Gayborhood?
Libby Adler
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 43 (2016)
As Franke’s readers are surely aware, contemporary advocates of “marriage equality” have long pressed an analogy between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage, or—conversely—between one man, one woman rules and the anti-miscegenation laws that were deemed unconstitutional in 1967 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia. William N. Eskridge, Jr., for example […]
Just Like Everyone Else
Solangel Maldonado
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 49 (2016)
To be fair, gays and lesbians paid what some of us would consider a high price for acceptance by the majority. As Franke demonstrates, the marriage equality movement had to pretend that sex is irrelevant to homosexuality and emphasize similarities with heterosexuals in order to appeal to the majority. One should not minimize these costs […]
Dreadlocked
Peggy Cooper Davis
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 53 (2016)
Scholars inevitably race against developments in their fields. Wedlocked is a prime example. It reports research that was, by the author’s account, undertaken to discourage advocacy for the cause of same-sex marriage, but completed and published in the wake of Obegerfell v. Hodges’s constitutional vindication of that cause. Professor Franke had taken as her starting […]
From Outlaw to Outcast to In-Law? Contesting the Perils of Marriage Equality
Linda C. McClain
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 59 (2016)
Wedlocked is not only dubious about the association of marriage with freedom, but also worries about the cost of that freedom on those who find the “promise of liberty” better realized by not taking the further step from outlaw to outcast to in-law. Franke contends that same-sex couples’ new freedom to marry—and the constitutional […]
The Author Meets Her Readers
Katherine M. Franke
Online Symposium: Katherine Franke’s Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality
96 B.U. L. Rev. Annex 65 (2016)
One of the things I appreciate most about the symposium’s contributions is the diversity of views they offer. Far from a round of applause, the participants take the book’s arguments seriously and give them serious critique. Of course, this book invites that kind of critical engagement, for it is far from a kind of post-Obergefell […]