Daily Read: Laura Appleman on Oscar Wilde (and Proposition 8)

As the United States Supreme Court continues to hold in abeyance its decision on whether to grant certiorari in the cases challenging the constitutionality of prohibitions on same-sex marriage in Proposition 8 or DOMA, and many mark the 158th birthday of Oscar Wilde (pictured), Professor Laura Appleman's 2011 article Oscar Wilde's Long Tail: Framing Sexual Identity in the Law, available here, is worth a read. 

Appleman argues that Wilde's 1895 trials for sodomy and the 2010 Proposition 8 trial both functioned as a legal stage for "enacting social-cultural anxiety over sexuality."  But beyond comparisons, Appleman argues that the Wilde trials constructed certain narratives about sexuality that the Court has been unwilling to confront in its sexuality decisions, including in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas.  The same-sex marriage decisions by state courts likewise participate in these narrative constructs.  Although, as her article states in its last sentence, how the courts continue down these paths is "a story yet untold." 

RR
[image of Oscar Wilde, circa 1882 via]