Who's the Bigot?

Learning from Conflicts Over Marriage and Civil Rights Law
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-087720-0
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Historically, critics of interracial, interfaith, and most recently same-sex marriage have invoked conscience and religious liberty to defend their objections, and often they have been accused of bigotry. Although denouncing and preventing bigotry is a shared political value with a long history, people disagree over who is a bigot and what makes a belief, attitude, or action bigoted. This is evident from the rejoinder that calling out bigotry is intolerant political correctness, even bigotry itself.

In Who's the Bigot?, the eminent legal scholar Linda C. McClain traces the rhetoric of bigotry and conscience across a range of debates relating to marriage and antidiscrimination law. Is "bigotry" simply the term society gives to repudiated beliefs that now are beyond the pale? She argues that the differing views people hold about bigotry reflect competing understandings of what it means to be "on the wrong side of history" and the ways present forms of discrimination resemble or differ from past forms. Furthermore, McClain shows that bigotry has both a backward- and forward-looking dimension. We not only learn the meaning of bigotry by looking to the past, but we also use examples of bigotry, on which there is now consensus, as the basis for making new judgments about what does or does not constitute bigotry and coming to new understandings of both injustice and justice.

By examining charges of bigotry and defenses based on conscience and religious belief in these debates, Who's the Bigot? makes a novel and timely contribution to our understanding of the relationship between religious liberty and discrimination in American life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McClain, Linda C.

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Sozialrecht
• Rechtswissenschaften Öffentliches Recht Staats- und Verfassungsrecht

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Chapter 1. Who's the Bigot? Puzzles about Bigotry

- Chapter 2. From "The Bigot in Our Midst" to "Good People" with Hidden Biases: The Scientific Study of Prejudice

- Chapter 3. Interfaith Marriage as a Protest Against Bigotry?: Debates in the 1950s and 1960s

- Chapter 4. "You are Waging a Fight of Morality and Conscience:" Competing Theologies of Segregation and Integration 144

- Chapter 5. "Our Spirit Is Not Narrow Bigotry": Debating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and "Legislating Morality"

- Chapter 6. Prejudice, Moral Progress, and Not Being "On the Wrong Side of History": The Legacy of Loving for the Right to Marry

- Chapter 7. "Sincere Believers," "Bigots," or "Superstitious Fools"?: Motives and Morality in the Supreme Court's Gay Rights Cases

- Chapter 8. "This Isn't 1964 Anymore"-Or Is It? Competing Appeals to the Civil Rights Past in Present Controversies over "Religious Liberty versus LGBT Rights"

- Chapter 9. Conclusion: Learning Bigotry's Lessons

Über Autor(innen)

Linda C. McClain is the Robert Kent Professor at Boston University School of Law. She also teaches in BU's Kilachand Honors College. An internationally known scholar, she has written about marriage, family law, civil rights law, gender equality and law, feminist legal theory, and law and religion. She has held fellowships at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, and the Safra Center at Harvard University. Her books include The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility, Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues (with James E. Fleming), Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship (co-edited with Joanna Grossman and cited in the credits for On the Basis of Sex), and What Is Parenthood? Contemporary Debates About the Family. A graduate of Oberlin College, she has an M.A. from University of Chicago Divinity School, a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, and an LL.M. from NYU School of Law.