The Proper Role of Morality in State Policies on Sexual Orientation and Intimate Relationships

Carlos A. Ball

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Cloning and the LGBTI Family: Cautious Optimism

Erez Aloni

Cloning cell-line colonies using cloning rings
Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex couples who wish to start a family currently have limited options. These options—adoption, assistive reproductive technology, and co-parenting—require a third party and thus present legal and logistical hurdles. Cloning would offer a unique opportunity for GLBTI parents to bear children who share their genes, with minimal third party involvement.

Currently, the federal government is banned from funding research on cloning. This article argues that such a ban violates the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. Because the federal government funds fertility research that enables heterosexual couples to bear children who share their genes, banning the most promising technology for helping LGBTI couples achieve the same result amounts to unconstitutional discrimination. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the legislature is under no obligation to “subsidize the exercise of a fundamental right,” it cannot discriminate in providing funding for the same purpose to different groups.

This article shows why traditional arguments against cloning are fundamentally flawed and argues for government funding of cloning research. As the author demonstrates, heterosexist beliefs about what families should look like motivate most opposition to cloning, though these beliefs may be disguised in neutral or scientific language.

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Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP): An Antidote to Congress’s One-Way Criminal Law Ratchet?

Scott Hechinger

(Photo used under Creative Commons from Fatmandy on Flickr)

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Climate-Induced Community Relocations: Creating an Adaptive Governance Framework Based in Human Rights Doctrine

Robin Bronen

English: Eagle, AK, July 27, 2009 — Don and Judy Mann’s house in Eagle, Alaska was pushed 300 feet off of its foundation by ice and flood waters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Climate change and the ecological alterations that result will cause millions of people to flee their homes.  This humanitarian crisis is occurring with unprecedented rapidity in the Arctic, where  rising temperatures, loss of arctic sea ice, thawing permafrost  have impacted  the 200 indigenous communities that have lived there for millennia.  Disaster relief and hazard migration have been the traditional humanitarian responses to extreme environmental events.  Yet government agencies are no longer able to protect communities despite spending millions of dollars on erosion control and flood relief.  Because there may be no way to quickly reverse the harm caused by climate change, community relocation may be the only immediate and permanent solution to protect people facing climate-induced ecological change.

This article provides an overview of the climate-induced ecological changes occurring in Alaska and an analysis of the post-disaster recovery and hazard migration laws that define the current humanitarian response to extreme weather events in the United States.  The author argues that these laws fail to address environmental disasters that occur gradually and require relocation and have, in fact, impeded efforts to relocate communities.  The article describes the unprecedented social and ecological crisis climate change has caused in Newtok, an Alaskan indigenous community that has resolved to relocate.  Ultimately, the article proposes the enactment of an adaptive governance framework based in human rights doctrine to protect people residing in communities threatened by climate change.  This framework will allow government agencies to transition their humanitarian response from protection in place to community relocation.

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