ABSTRACT
This chapter examines sexual orientation as a human rights issue. Legislative intervention in Canada to protect human rights is a post-World War II phenomenon. The chapter focuses on the equality provisions of the Charter. However, a more critical appraisal has recently emerged, especially in relation to the focus on categories of discrimination, which reflects the problems of rigid categorical thinking in law more generally. Closely related to the universalizing of categories is the focus on their immutability as a justification for constitutional protection of the individual from discrimination. In recent jurisprudence concerning sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination, the use of immutability as a basis for considering what constitutes an analogous ground has on occasion arisen explicitly. The chapter seeks to intervene in the debates surrounding human rights and sexual orientation by questioning some of the dominant understandings of sexuality as they emerge within legal discourse.
