Carlos A. Ball ‘The Queering of the American Corporation’

Carlos A. Ball is Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Research Scholar at Rutgers University. He has published several book on LGBT rights, including The First Amendment and LGBT Equality (Harvard University Press, 2017), After Marriage Equality (NYU Press, 2016), and Same-Sex Marriage and Children (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is currently serving as Senior Editor of Oxford University Press’s LGBT Politics and Policy Research Encyclopedia. He teaches courses on Constitutional Law, the First Amendment, and Sexuality, Gender Identity, and the Law.
In this Hennick/IFLS co sponsored talk, Professor Ball will outline his arguments, to be published as “The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBT Adversary to Ally” (Beacon Press, forthcoming 2019), and answer questions about his arguments and their implications. He will explore the largely untold story of how the U.S. LGBT rights movement, in the decades following Stonewall, helped to turn large American companies from pervasive discriminators against sexual minorities and transgender individuals to defenders of LGBT equality. Big businesses are essentially conservative institutions that do not usually weigh in on controversial “culture war” issues. His talk will argue that corporate support for LGBT equality–as manifested, for example, recently in corporate America’s vehement opposition to so-called transgender bathroom laws–is an exception to that general rule. At a time when the LGBT rights movement in the U.S. is facing considerable political backlash following crucial victories such as the attainment of marriage equality across the country, corporate America has become a crucial ally of LGBT people.
Link for sharing: ifls.osgoode.yorku.ca/qthecorpcarlosball
Questions? LGonsalves@osgoode.yorku.ca
Tickets: https://webform.osgoode.yorku.ca/view.php?id=373359 .