The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law

Dr Senthorun Raj is a critical legal scholar who works in the intersections of emotion, culture, race, gender, sexuality, law, and justice.

Associate Professor Senthorun Raj will reflect on his new monograph, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). In conversation with Castan Centre member Professor Paula Gerber, Sen will discuss contemporary law reform debates about LGBT rights, including religious exceptions to anti-discrimination laws, legal gender recognition, and sex and LGBT education in schools in various countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom and United States.

The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law analyses emotions that shape conflicts of rights that emerge between different groups across law reforms aimed at better supporting LGBT people. Drawing from critical legal theories, this book cultivates the concept of “emotional grammar” to show how emotions structure law reform pursuits by threading together Hansard, legislation, case law, law reform consultations, and statutory guidance. By doing so, it explains why addressing this emotional grammar is important for scholars, lawyers, judges, legislators, and activists seeking to navigate conflicts over LGBT rights and reforms that aim to repair the inequalities faced by LGBT people.

The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law is available to download for free from Edinburgh University Press.

For all enquiries or accessibility requirements, please contact the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law via email: castan.centre@monash.edu.