Sex, Love, and Marriage: Questioning Gender and Sexuality Rights in International Law

Abstract

The cover of Sex Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2002 shows a picture of two men photographed from the back, with their hands holding each other's waists. They are walking towards a camera crew. Based on the way they are dressed, it seems that they have just been married. Both men are wearing white dress shirts and have similar hairstyles, with one wearing a black waistcoat over the white shirt and the other with black braces. This collection, based on the Oxford Amnesty Lectures series on gender and sexuality, thus apparently features on its cover the same-sex marriage of two men, ostensibly held in one of the few jurisdictions that have legalized such a union (perhaps the Netherlands, which was the first to do so, and was later followed by Belgium, Spain, Canada, Massachusetts (United States), and South Africa). And while we know that ‘love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage’, what has sex got to do with this? Would it not be more appropriate for a cover of a book entitled Sex Rights to feature two persons engaged in sex or having just engaged in sex rather than a marriage ceremony? Would it not be more appropriate to depict, on a cover of a book called Sex Rights, a picture of two men in a position that suggests they have just had sex, an act for which they could be persecuted and prosecuted in various jurisdictions?So why, then, does a book on Sex Rights feature same-sex marriage on its cover?