The Student Society of the Law School presents the last of its series of three public lectures, focusing on gender and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) equality.

Venue: Grand Court

Dates: Thursday 29th January

Time: 6 pm

From burning at the stake to being welcomed in the church…

… how homophobia has followed the steps of misogyny and racism in the western hemisphere.

The apparent shift of the Roman Catholic Church towards homosexuality has caused waves across the world of tectonic proportions. The ‘Law and Equality’ lectures have sought to provide the audience with:

1)        basic elements to understand such a change in order to be able to hold a more informed debate about homophobia;

2)        an overview of the laws of the Cayman Islands that promote gender and LGBT equality; and

3)        an overview of the European Convention on Human Rights and gay rights: Where we are now in the UK and the Cayman Islands.

Following two highly successful and well attended lectures, Dr Leonardo J Raznovich will explain the methodology used to control three sectors of the population, and in some cases to annihilate them totally or partially, throughout the last millennium: women, colored people of African origin and gay men.   The tools that were used to control (and in some cases to suppress such sectors), were arguably the result of defined policies enacted into laws that were made and enforced by white, Christian, outwardly heterosexual men. These policies (in chronological order) resulted in the criminalization, pathologisation and segregation of the targeted members of these three sectors. During the lectures, the aforementioned policies will be visited and explained with the purpose of providing the audience with historical facts that help to support the hypothesis that today’s homophobia is simply yesterday’s misogyny and racism. The lecture will focus on misogyny and racism: from the witch-hunt of pre-Renaissance to the current fight for gender equality and from the slave trade to today’s policies of positive discrimination that attempt to redress past wrongs. The lecture will also focus on gay men (although reference to lesbian women will be made as well in an attempt to explain the difference in their treatment): from being burnt at the stake to having equality of civil rights.

IMAGE: Dr. Leonardo Raznovich

Dr. Leonardo Raznovich obtained a LL.B. from the University of Buenos Aires in 1995, a LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 1997 and a doctorate degree from Oxford University in 2004. He was Head of Law (2008-2010) and principal lecturer in law (until 2012) at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK where he was responsible for setting up three law degree programs, a law library and a center for dispute resolution. He also served as Convenor of the Legal Education Section of the Society for Legal Scholars Conference in the U.K. for the triennium 2009/2011. He has published a book and several articles in both Spanish and English law in comparative civil procedure and evidence law, dispute resolution and judicial reform, unjust enrichment and international private law in particular in the area of recognition of marriages across jurisdictions. He is currently a law lecturer at the Cayman Islands Law School where he teaches evidence, EU law, jurisprudence and dispute resolution.

As an attorney at law in practice since 1995 in Argentina and called to the Bar in England in 2010, Leonardo gained experience in a wide range of commercial matters and more recently also public law matters, in particular, in cases involving human right issues in the area of LGBT equality.