Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Toleration
- Part II Equality
- Part III Individual autonomy
- 7 Autonomy, association and pluralism
- 8 Sexual orientation, exit and refuge
- 9 On exit
- 10 Minors within minorities: a problem for liberal multiculturalists
- 11 Beyond exit rights: reframing the debate
- Part IV Self-determination
- Part V Democracy
- References
- Index
8 - Sexual orientation, exit and refuge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Toleration
- Part II Equality
- Part III Individual autonomy
- 7 Autonomy, association and pluralism
- 8 Sexual orientation, exit and refuge
- 9 On exit
- 10 Minors within minorities: a problem for liberal multiculturalists
- 11 Beyond exit rights: reframing the debate
- Part IV Self-determination
- Part V Democracy
- References
- Index
Summary
Some kinds of minorities-within-minorities problems can be characterized as: this minority community relegates some of its members to second-class status and membership. Can this be morally legitimate? If it is not, who is morally permitted to act to change it, and using what means? Questions concerning the status of women in conservative cultural and religious communities are typically of this form.
But it is important to remember that not all minorities-within-minorities situations have this form. Conservative religious and cultural groups do think that women have some place in their societies; this is often not so for, for example, gays and lesbians. The problem of second-class membership is different in kind from the problem of those who are, in principle, denied any kind of membership at all. I propose to examine this latter kind of problem, focusing on the case of gay and lesbian members of religious and cultural communities that are hostile to homosexuality. Shifting our focus in this way reemphasizes the importance of exit rights, an importance that has been somewhat obscured by the recent turn to “transformative accommodation” in thought about minorities within minorities. And it refocuses attention on what the society surrounding minority cultures must be like, for exit to do the moral work that we demand of it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Minorities within MinoritiesEquality, Rights and Diversity, pp. 172 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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