Sex Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2002. Edited by
Nicholas Bamforth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 320p.
$27.50.
A collection of revised versions of lectures given in 2002 on the
general topics of gender, sexuality, and human rights (with two additional
commissioned pieces), this volume is in some ways what one would expect: a
loosely connected group of essays most (but not all) of which discuss the
relationship of gender and (other-than-normative) sexuality to human
rights. As the cover photograph—of two men in dress clothes
embracing, perhaps in the aftermath of a gay commitment
ceremony—suggests, one unifying theme of the work is whether
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) people's claim to be
treated by society, the law, and the state with the same respect and
protection as are heterosexual couples is, in fact, a human rights claim.
However, readers who might be led by the packaging to expect the work as a
whole to center on that consideration will be disappointed.