Parents Sue School for Allowing Son to Be Openly Gay October 19, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/10/05/Whats_Sex_Got_to_Do_with_Family

Gayle Salamon, assistant professor of English at Princeton University, describes a law suit filed by the parents of Lawrence King, an openly-gay 15-year-old who was shot dead by fellow classmate Brandon McInerney. The suit charges E.O. Green Junior High School for failing to protect King from his own gender transgressive behavior.

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Sex is both at the core and the edge of the family life.

In an era when the conceptual and political transformation of the family is most palpable on a global scale, often generating impassioned debates among those wedded or even indifferent to "the family values," this panel seeks to explore family formations through their deepest open secrets: sex, sexuality and sexual practices.

Gayle Salamon is Assistant Professor of English at Princeton University. She received a Ph.D. in rhetoric from the University of California-Berkeley, where she wrote her dissertation on Assuming a Body: Transgenderism and Rhetorics of Materiality. She has held a research fellowship at Brown University's Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, and has taught a broad spectrum of courses at UC-Berkeley on the topics of embodiment and gender.

Her new research project at Princeton will explore the role that proprioception and chronic pain can play in shaping a bodily sense of self. Her teaching this year will include courses on themes of "passing" in modern literature, and transgender theory. Salamon holds the new LGBT Studies Fellowship, funded by an endowment from the Fund for Reunion, the bisexual, transgendered, gay and lesbian alumni association of Princeton.