Monday, November 24, 2008

Privileging (Gay or Straight) Marriage is Misplaced

For the November 24, 2008 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we talked with law professor Nancy D. Polikoff, author of a new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law (Beacon Press, 2008).

She argues that by privileging marriage under the law over other relationships, many people suffer, including those in domestic partnerships. She breaks with fellow queer activists who are now flowing into the streets to defend gay marriage after California voters approved Prop. 8 that banned gay marriage in California. She challenges those activists to see beyond gay "equality" arguments that restrict marriage benefits only to those willing to get married.

Nancy D. Polikoff is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the areas of family law, civil procedure, and sexuality and the law. Previously, she supervised family law programs at the Women's Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), and before that she practiced law as part of a feminist law collective. For 30 years, she has been writing about and litigating cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in John D'Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (St, Martin's Press, 2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father's visitation rights.
For more on the book, go to http://www.beyondstraightandgaymarriage.com/.
To listen to the show, click here:

Monday, November 17, 2008

UCI's Olive Tree Initiative; Obama's Ascendancy and the Future of Radical Opposition to the U.S. State

For the next edition of Subversity, to air Monday 17 November 2008 at 9 am, we first talk with several UCI students who had a chance to travel recently to the Middle East to see first-hand the situation there. And in part two of the program, we talk with a UC Riverside professor about the future prospects for progressive struggles in the wake of Barack Obama's election.

A group of UCI students recently visited Israel and the occupied territories to observe the situation there, under the auspices of the Olive Tree Initiative

In part 1 of the show, we ask UCI senior Omar Bustami and UCI sophomore Moran Cohen why they went on the the trip, what they found and what lessons they learned.

To listen to part 1 of the show, click here: .

In part 2, we talk with UC Riverside ethnic studies Assoc. Prof. Dylan Rodriguez about what is the future for progressive anti-racism struggle when the U.S. President is for the first time an African American. He's not optimistic. He believes an Obama administration will continue to "domesticate, discipline, and contain a politics of radical opposition to a U.S. nation-building project that now insists on the diversity of the American "we," while leaving so many for dead." See his essay, Inaugurating Multiculturalist White Supremacy, posted on Racewire. We also discussed this collection of essays, to which he contributed a chapter: The revolution will not be funded : beyond the non-profit industrial complex, edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007; Table of Contents. The book addresses the limits of civil society and NGOs.

To listen to part 2 of the show, click here: .

Monday, November 10, 2008

Immigrant Lives Past and Present

More on Subversity blog.


Immigration will surely be one of the issues the incoming Obama administration will be addressing. Latest federal ICE statistics show 349,041 immigrants were deported in the past year (through Septembe 2008), up from 288,663 the previous fiscal year (see jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/11/us-deporting-record-levels-of.php).

For our November 10, 2008 edition, Subversity, a KUCI public affairs show, presents our interview with UCI labor historian Gilbert Gonzales on Mexican Labor migration and its roots in U.S. imperialism. He addresses the tumultuous history of Mexican labor in the United States and in Orange County.

This is a repeat show from May Day 2006 and we present it as the UCI Libraries opens the following Tuesday (November 18) a Fall exhibit on "Immigrant Lives in 'The OC' and Beyond," curated by the show host. Prof. Gonzales' research on a citrus strike in 1930s Orange County is among the areas featured in the exhibit.

To listen to the entire show, click here: