In this special issue on Transgender Issues and Sexual Orientation an article about the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy 'Discrimination Against Transgendered People In America' that answers basic questions pertaining to transgender issues. Mary Coombs examines the relationship between transgenderism and homosexuality and concludes that one reason the gay, lesbian and transgendered communities need to ally is 'because we have common enemies.' In a brief, with and introduction by Francisco Forrest Martin, submitted to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of a female-to-male transsexual seeking recognition of his status as the 'functional but non-biological father' of the biological daughter of his partner for 15 years, a woman, chronicles the legal recognition of transsexuals in Europe, and the United States including the consideration of gender dysphoria and transsexualism as a disability, noting that European laws and courts have 'evidenced a greater sensitivity to the plight of transsexuals' than in the United States. Phyllis Randolph Frye hold a speech July 6, 1996, at the Fifth International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy Conference, 'TRANSGEN'96,' in Houston in which she discusses a variety of 'freedoms' beginning with her personal experience as an out transgendered person, and examines societal pressure on transgendered people to have sex reassignment surgery.
Special on the January 1998 panel on 'Race and Sexual Orientation in Legal Scholarship' at the American Association of Law Schools. Barbara J. Cox plead to change the whiteness of gay and lesbian scholarship and to recognize its monolithic viewpoint. Elvia R. Arriola examines her development as a Latina Lesbian legal scholar and urges her academic colleagues to examine their privilege and underlying assumptions and exhorts them to focus on the intersections between race and sexual orientation to 'produce healing, community and a commitment to coalition, not divisiveness in the politics of identity.' Kevin McNeill, a Sociology graduate student, examines twenty years of empirical literature regarding the parenting styles of gay and lesbian parents, to determine what effects, if any, these alternative family groups have on their children, as compared to those raised in heterosexual families. Frank Valdes analyzes the 'Solomon II amendment'--federal legislation that denies certain types of federal student-loan funds to law schools which prohibit the United States military, an employer that openly and formally discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, from recruiting on their campuses.