Martha Nausbaum believes that equality is
necessary and must be obtainable by everyone
no matter what your sexual orientation is.
Martha Nussbaum
- Martha Nussbaum, (born May 6, 1947,
New York, New York, U.S.), American
philosopher and legal scholar known for
her wide-ranging work in ancient Greek
and Roman philosophy, the philosophy
of law, moral psychology, ethics,
philosophical feminism. contributions
to contemporary debates on human
rights, social justice, economic
development, political feminism and
women’s rights, LGBTQ rights.
- Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund
(pabasa na lang sa ppt)
- Nussbaum studied at Wellesley College
and at New York University (NYU),
from which she graduated with a
bachelor’s degree in 1969. At Harvard
University she earned master’s (1971)
and doctoral (1975) degrees in Classical
philology.
One of her works is the Gay rights.
- Nussbaum looks at five rights that are
at issue in the contemporary
discussion of gay rights.
Whose rights are these “GAY RIGHTS”?
- Gays, lesbians, and bisexual, the class of
persons with a homosexual or bisexual
orientation and those who stably and
characteristically desire to engage in
sexual conduct with a member or
members of the same sex.
- Gay rights advocates equal rights for
LGBTQ persons; seeks to eliminate
sodomy laws; and calls for an end to
discrimination against LGBTQ persons
in employment, credit, housing, public
accommodations, and other areas of life.
(Although the term gay is commonly
used in reference to homosexual males,
it is also used more generally to refer to
homosexual males together with some
or all other orientations within the
LGBTQ community.
What are the rights?
The rights to be protected
1. Gay, lesbians, and bisexual are targets of
violence in America. 24% of gay men
and 10% of lesbians, in a recent survey,
reported some form of criminal assault
because of their sexual orientation
during the past year.
2. surveys on anti-gay/lesbian violence
show that thirty-three percent of those
surveyed had been chased or followed,
objects thrown at them, beaten, victims
of vandalism or arson, spit on, and
assaulted with a weapon (Comstock,
1991, pp. 31-55).
3. As one might expect, such violence is
not unknown in the military. The 1992
death of navy radioman Allen Schindler
at the hands of three of his shipmates
who, unprovoked, stalked and then
fatally beat him—and later blamed their
crime on the presence of gays in the
military.
4. five youths beat a forty-year-old gay
man to death (Comstock, 1991, p. 93).
5. The data suggest that gay-beatings,
including the most lethal, are often in
essence "recreational": groups of
adolescent men, bored and intoxicated,
seek out gays not so much because they
have a deep-seated hatred of them as
because the society has agreed to dislike
and not to protect fully (Comstock,
1991, p. 94).
6. Physical assaults are crimes as defined
by the laws of every state in the U.S. In
that sense, the right to be protected
against them is a right that gays and
lesbians have already. But there is ample
evidence that the police often fail to
uphold these rights. Even more common
is the failure of police to come promptly
to the aid of gays and lesbians who are
being assaulted.
7. As long as no laws protect gays against
discrimination in other areas of life and
guarantee their equal citizenship, as long
as their sex acts can be criminalized, as
long they are disparaged as second-class
citizens, we may expect the rights they
do have to go on being underenforced,
and violence against them to remain a
common fact.
8. Nussbaum argues that there is also
emotional violence done to lesbians and
gay people by the perception that they
are hated and despised. This issue too
can be addressed by law and public
policy; by enacting non-discrimination
laws (such as the law recently enacted in
my home state of Massachusetts, which
forbids discrimination against lesbian
and gay students in the school system)
one can begin to alter the behavior that
causes this harm. Perhaps eventually
one may alter attitudes themselves.
The Right to Have Consensual Adult Sexual
Relations Without Criminal Penalty
1. Consensual sexual relations between
adult males were decriminalized in
Britain in 1967. In the US, five states
still criminalize only same-sex sodomy,
while eighteen statutes (including the
Uniform Code of Military Justice)
criminalize sodomy for all.
2. It is frequently assumed that sodomy
defines gay or lesbian sexual life.
3. The case against sodomy laws is strong.
Rarity of enforcement creates a problem
of arbitrary and selective police
behavior. Although neither all nor
only homosexuals are sodomites, the
laws are overwhelmingly used to
target them; and the fact that some of
their acts remain criminal is closely
connected with the perception that they
are acceptable targets of violence and
with other social exclusions as well.
4. As Judge Posner concludes, such laws
"express an irrational fear and loathing
of a group that has been subjected to
discrimination" (1992,p. 346). We have
no need for such laws in a country all
too full of incitements to violence.
The Right to Be Free from Discrimination in
Housing, Employment, and Education
1. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals face
discrimination in housing and
employment, leading to the adoption of
non-discrimination laws in many U.S.
states and local communities. However,
 efforts have been made to prevent local
communities from legislating through
referenda amending the state's
constitution to forbid the passage of
such laws.
2. The most serious issue with
non-discrimination laws is the issue of
religious freedom. Both institutions and
individuals may believe that being
required to treat lesbians and gays as
equal candidates for jobs or prospective
tenants is to be deprived of the freedom
to exercise their religion. This argument
seems more relevant to some
occupations than others.
3. The U.S. Supreme Court recently
refused to hear an appeal of an Alaska
decision against a landlord who refused
to rent on religious grounds to an
unmarried heterosexual couple.
(example
4. When it comes to employment naman.
There is no evidence to suggest that
the presence of gay and lesbian
teachers harms children or
adolescents, and there is no evidence to
show that knowing or respecting a gay
person has the power to convert children
to homosexuality.
The right to military
1. The real issue that keeps coming up is
that heterosexual males do not want to
be forced to associate intimately with
gay males, especially to be seen naked
by them.
2. "homosexual panic." The psychology of
this intense fear of the gaze of the
homosexual is interesting. This fear
may have something to do with the idea
expressed by Comstock's gay-basher,
wherein a heterosexual male in a
military might feel like connected with
the thought that this man will look at me
in the way I look at a woman—i,e. not
in a respectful or personal way, but a
way that says "I want to fuck you"—and
that this gaze will somehow hurt their
pride, ego, and they feel humiliate me.
3. Moving on, we note that openly gay
officers have been included in the police
forces of New York City, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles and probably
others by now, without incident.
4. During wartime, moreover, when the
need for solidarity and high morale is
greatest, toleration of gay and lesbian
soldiers has gone up, not down (see
Shilts, 1992).
5. As Judge Posner writes, rible to tell
people they are unfit to serve their
country, unless they really are unfit,
which is not the case here" (Posner,
1992, p. 321). That’s why you cannot
tell to gay community that they cannot
serve the country specially when they
are physically fit to do so, so their right
to the military is important as well.
The Right to Marriage and/or the Legal and
Social Benefit of Marriage
1. Gays and lesbians in Denmark, Swedon
and Norway can form a registered
partnership that given all the tax,
inheritance and other civic benifits of
marringe; similar legislation in soon to
he passed in Finland. Many businesses,
universities, and other organizations
within other nations, including the U.S.,
 have extended their marriage benefits to
registered same-sex domestic partners.
Gay marriage is currently a topic of
intense debate in Judaism and in every
major branch of Christianity.
2. Why are marriage rights important to
gays?
3. Although many lesbian and gay people
consider themselves married and have
frequently solemnized their commitment
in ceremonies not recognized by the
state, they still seck to do so in a
recognized manner, because they attach
importance to the public recognition of
their union.
4. As the Norwegian Ministry of Children
and Family Affairs writes, supporting
Norway's 1993 law: "It can be
detrimental for a person to have to
suppress fundamental feelings
concerning attachment and love for
another person. Distancing oneself
from these feelings or attempts to
suppress them may destroy one's
self-respect"
5. The basis of marriage in the U.S. and
Europe is generally taken to be a stated
desire to live together in intimacy, love
and partnership, and to support one
another, materially and emotionally, in
the conduct of daily life. Of course
many people enter marriage unprepared,
and many marriages fail; but the law
cannot and should not undertake a
stringent inquiry into the character and
behavior of the parties before admitting
them to the benefits of that status.
6. But nobody has seriously suggested
denying marriage rights to
postmenopausal women, to sterile
individuals of any age or to people who
simply know (and state) that they don't
want children and won't have them. It
therefore seems flatly inconsistent and
unjust to deny these rights to other
individuals who wish to form exactly
this type of committed yet childless
union.
7. No doubt the extension of marriage
rights to gays and lesbians will change
the way we think about "the family." On
the other hand, "the family" has never
been a single thing in western, far less in
world, history, and its nuclear
heterosexual form has been associated
with grave problems of child abuse and
gender inequality, so there is no reason
to sentimentalize it as a morally perfect
institution.
The Right to Retain Custody of Children and/or
to Adopt
1. Gays and lesbians have and raise
children, with 20 percent of male
homosexuals and over a third of female
homosexuals having been married in a
1970s California survey.
2. Lesbian couples can have children
through artificial insemination or sex
with a male, while a gay man can obtain
a child through surrogacy arrangements.
Children raised in homosexual
households show no differences in
sexual orientation, mental health, or
social adjustment. There is no evidence
to justify a court removing a child from
their parent's custody on the grounds of
living in a homosexual union.
3. There is no evidence to justify a court in
removing a child from its parent's
 custody on the grounds that he or she is
living in a homosexual union.
4. If one were to argue that such a child
will inevitably be the target of social
prejudice, no matter how well its parent
is doing, it seems plausible that the
Constitution will intervene to block that
argument.
5. In 1984, the Supreme Court returned
custody to the child's mother in Palmore
v. Sidoti, which was cited as a precedent
in a 1985 Alaska decision granting
custody to a gay parent. It is important
that children should not be removed
from the custody of parents who love
and care for them successfully without
compelling reason.
6. For adoption and foster-parenting,
courts should take a case-by-case
approach, rejecting a flat ban. The
reason for refusing a homosexual couple
must not be the existence of public
prejudice against homosexuality, as no
feature intrinsic to homosexuality has
been demonstrated to have a detrimental
effect on children.
deeply into the perspectives of religious groups
that may hold conservative views on LGBTQ+
rights. Critics may argue that a more robust
exploration of religious perspectives would
provide a more balanced understanding of the
complexities surrounding the topic.
4. Legal and political feasibility: Nussbaum
argues for sweeping legal changes to promote
LGBTQ+ rights, including the recognition of
same-sex marriages. Critics might question the
practicality or political feasibility of
implementing such changes, particularly in
countries with deeply entrenched social and
cultural opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.
It is important to note that these criticisms do not
undermine Nussbaum's entire argument, but
rather provide different perspectives to consider
and encourage further discussion on the topic.
Nussbaum's paper is an influential contribution
to the ongoing discourse on LGBTQ+ rights.

criticism

2. Intersectionality: Although Nussbaum

highlights the importance of recognizing the
intersectionality of identities, critics may argue
that she could have further explored the unique
challenges faced by individuals who hold
multiple marginalized identities, such as being
both LGBTQ+ and a person of color.

3. Religious perspectives: Nussbaum's paper

does not delve
for asking kineme sila? need ba na magkapangalan muna sila
pra mahalin sila ng mga tao at hindi saktan
at tanggalan ng karapatan. diba hindi, paano
pag-iwan sa thought ng religious country. pla yung mga normal gay people. so
alam naman natin na once maptupad itong basically, yung mga arguements ni
mga laws or rights na arguments ni nussbaum n need ipatupad ang mga rights
nussbaum, parang nawawalan ng bisa or ng lgbtq community is vv important.
madidisrespct nga yung religion, yung mga
commandments and such. kadi diba po ang daming babae (normal) na
nasasakstan, naabuso, nahaharass, ‘yung
one criticism nga is yung parang pag take mga normal na lalaki na inaapi (sabihin na
away ng thought na yung religion. knowing natin normal kasi diba noon ang tingin sa
na maraming religious country. kagaya na kanila abnormal, wala lang) how much more
lamang sa bansa natin pilipinas. na ang yung gay community na tinuturing na salot
mindset when it comes to that is ang lalaki sa lipunan, na mga sugo ng demonyo kasi
ay lalaki vice versa. girl is to boy vice versa. diba taliwas sa Diyos? Sakit sila,
and yung ganitong mindset hindi natin kinakadirian super noon. how much more
maiiwasan kaya marami pa rin ang blinded sila? so basically super important na
by this kinds of thoughts dahil nga ito ang ma-implement yung rights nila as a person,
turo sa simbahan. kaya kapag may ganiyan as a community.
instances ang unang nagiging thought is that
salot sila kasi bakit sila ganiyan. bakit
ganiyan ang katauhan nila. pero now na ang
daming prominent gay actors. ppl at this
time, they’re accepting na yung thought nga
ng mga gay. tsaka yung pagkilala rin sa gay
community sa television ng ph yung super
sireyna, yung drag queens, ms. qna.
na-oopen na rin yung mindset nila with gay
community. pero bago man sila marecognize
as a community ang dami nilany
pinagdaanan, like mga hatred ang natanggap
nila si vice ganda. not until, kinilala na lang
siyang meme because of her efforts to be
recognized. so masasabi ko lang na altho
may countries talaga na super ina-abide
yung kautasan ng simbahan hindi pa rin
natin maiiwasan ang pagkakaroob ng
recognition sa gay ppl. but should that be the
case all the time? kaialangan ba may
mapatunayan muna sila para ma recognize