I'm working on an article tentatively titled "Gender Dissenters: The Ideology of Gender," in which I examine gender as expression and possible First Amendment protection for a person's gender presentation. The article explores the notion of gender as ideology, and with that, the government's labeling of an individual as male or female as state enforced orthodoxy.

My most recent publication is a book chapter: "The Ties that (Don't) Bind: Transgender Family Law and the Un-making of Families," in Transgender Law and Social Policy (Paisley Currah, Richard M. Huang and Shannon Minter, eds.), which examines the considerable barriers and legal instability faced by transgender individuals in the realm of marriage, custody and other family law issues.

I've also recently published two short pieces: "Sex and (Sexed by) the State," 25:4 Women's Rights Law Reporter 101(2004) (concerning potential transgender rights implications of the Massachusetts same-sex marriage decision, Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health); and "What does Oakley Tell Us about the Failures of Constitutional Decisionmaking?", in 26 Western New England Law Review 1(2004) (introducing a symposium collection concerning a troubling decision involving the intersection of reproductive rights, due process guarantees and poverty).

One of my articles from 2001 was recently republished in a collected volume by the UCLA School of Law's Williams Project, after being awarded the Dukeminier Prize for leading scholarship in the field. [See The Dukeminier Awards: Best Sexual Orientation Law Review Articles.] This is a republication of "Transforming the Debate: Why We Need to Include Transgender Rights in the Struggles for Sex and Sexual Orientation Equality," originally published in the Columbia Law Review in 2001.

There are two, both of which took place while I was on staff at the ACLU of Southern California:

• I represented a transgendered father who faced losing all legal rights to his child solely because of his gender identity: in what is thought to be one of the first victories of its kind, my client was not only declared to be legally male (he had been born anatomically female and had undergone sex reassignment surgeries) and a legal parent, but also received 50 percent custody of his young daughter;
• I also represented twin boys in front of the California Supreme Court. The boys were kicked out of the Cub Scouts at age 9 for being atheists: we lost that case, on reasoning similar to that of the US Supreme Court in Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, which was decided shortly thereafter.

My summer's reading was dedicated to famous Harrys: Linda Greenhouse's biography of Justice Blackmun (Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey) as well as the latest Harry Potter book: I loved the first and got a big kick out of the second!

Ride my horse out in the woods behind my home in Western Mass. I've wanted a horse ever since I was a little kid and finally got one last year: how many people can say that their childhood dreams really came true?!?

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