The Rise of Gay Rights and the Fall of the British Empire: Liberal Resistance and the Bloomsbury Group

David A. J. Richards

apr 2013 · Cambridge University Press

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This book argues that there is an important connection between ethical resistance to British imperialism and the ethical discovery of gay rights. It examines the roots of liberal resistance in Britain and resistance to patriarchy in the USA, showing the importance of fighting the demands of patriarchal manhood and womanhood to countering imperialism. Advocates of feminism and gay rights are key because they resist the gender binary's role in rationalizing sexism and homophobia. The connection between the rise of gay rights and the fall of empire illuminates questions of the meaning of democracy and universal human rights as shared human values that have appeared since World War II. The book casts doubt on the thesis that arguments for gay rights must be extrinsic to democracy and reflect Western 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.

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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, 'Resisting Injustice', with NYU University Professor Carol Gilligan, and the seminar 'Retributivism 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.