Review of Damian A. Gonzalez Salzberg, Sexuality and Transsexuality Under the European Convention on Human Rights: A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019, xviii + 248 pp, hb £58.32.

Abstract

Damian Gonzalez-Salzberg’s recent book, "Sexuality and Transsexuality under the European Convention on Human Rights: A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law," offers a cogent reading and critique of almost 40 years of caselaw on sex, gender, and (homo)sexuality at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Across this book, we get not only astute analyses of a vast body of caselaw, but also hints of an idiosyncratic—and welcome—queer perspective on this caselaw. Importantly, queer victories are found in untraditional places, in legal losses and failures even. In some ways, however, Gonzalez-Salzberg’s book restricts its queer queries to too-typical terrains, in turn allowing readers to sidestep broad landscapes of trouble in the European project, including this continent’s continued historical willingness to rely on (il)liberalism, (il)illogic, and (il)legal limitations with regards race and religion.

Keywords: transgender, sexuality, queer, Europe, human rights