Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: In eleven countries, same-sex sexual intimacy is punishable by death. Applying a legal pluralistic framework, we argue that “state-enabled killing” of same-sex-attracted people occurs in at least twenty-three countries. State-enabled killings range from extrajudicial and quasi-judicial killings, where state actors carry out the killing, through instances where the state retrospectively authorizes, through bias or lawful excuses to homicide, the killing of same-sex-attracted people by private actors, to cases where the state permits or endorses forms of so-called “conversion therapy” that can lead to death. We contend that a narrow focus on the death penalty as the only genuine form of state-enabled killing of same-sex-attracted people is analytically unwarranted and strategically dubious in terms of law reform advocacy. Critical legal pluralism allows us to pursue the practical and normative implications of hypothesizing a functional equivalence between the death penalty and these other forms of state-enabled killing.
Source: Law & Social Inquiry
DOI: 10.1017/lsi.2022.48
Institutions: Monash University, University of Reading
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
OpenAlex ID: W4297879999