Author Description

"This collection is a crucial reminder that LGBTIQ+ rights in the UK (and beyond) have been anything but achieved, and the narrative of linear 'progress' on the queer rights front is simply a myth. Many battles remain to be fought and won, and we need the critical voices in this collection to help us identify ways in which we can do precisely that" - Nuno Ferreira, Professor of Law, University of Sussex, UK. "This landmark collection provides an important contribution to queer legal scholarship. Raj and Dunne have assembled a terrific line-up of authors providing important insights into the ways that law has sought to transform queers from 'outlaws' into 'in laws.' In doing so, the collection problematises the powerful ways - both in civil and criminal law - that law can seek to surround, suffocate, and silence identities and the struggle that can then ensue. This is therefore a collection about struggle and power, and serves as an important primer for all those who seek to explore and challenge the impact of law on contemporary queer citizenship" - Chris Ashford, Professor of Law, Northumbria University, UK. This book contributes to current debates about "queer outsides" and "queer outsiders" that emerge from tensions in legal reforms aimed at improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people in the United Kingdom. LGBTIQ people in the UK have moved from being situated as "outlaws" - through prohibitions on homosexuality or cross-dressing - to respectable "in laws" - through the emerging acceptance of same-sex families and self-identified genders. From the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to the provision of a bureaucratic mechanism to amend legal sex in the Gender Recognition Act 2004, bringing LGBTIQ people "inside" the law has prompted enormous activist and academic commentary on the desirability of inclusion-focused legal and social reforms. Canvassing an array of current socio-lega