The Wrong Track, Baby - How Damage to Gay Youth was Borne this Way: Via Ideologically Bound Law Reviews Publishing 'Hopey Changey Stuff'

Abstract:     
This manuscript uses law reviews’ treatment of - and impact on - sexual minority youths and adults as the analytic through which to argue that a meaningful problem exists with the law review publication process. Significant ethical issues involve themselves in editorial decisions to publish legal scholarship into the marketplace of ideas. Specific among these issues include law reviews’ role in advancing the hope that sexual minority youth can change through reparative therapy or via an ability to “pray the gay away.”

This Article addresses how the law review submission and editorial process - particularly at law reviews affiliated with parent entities with ideological missions - has contributed to minority stress, a contributing factor in sexual minority suicide. The manuscript argues that ideologues have furthered their personal agendas by opportunistically leveraging the mission-centered nature of the institution attached to a given law review.

Such a process has led to the exploitation of student-edited law reviews. This misuse has led students to fail to engage in the research and diligence that would be expected of them as members of the bar. As a result, this Article maintains that this ethical failure has resulted in the publication of many fundamentally flawed law review articles upon which legislatures, voters, advocacy groups, public personalities, and courts have relied to the detriment of gay youths across the United States. Serving as a counternarrative to the traditional law review system, this Article proposes several potential improvements to the current system.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 51

Keywords: gay, youth, juveniles, suicide, bullying, bullycide, queer, Lady Gaga, reparative therapy, conversion therapy, George Rekers, conservative, religious, religious conservative, social conservative, It Gets Better

Accepted Paper Series