Covering

[Daniel]

Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
by Jenji Yoshino

I heard the author speak about his work on the Gay Cable Network this evening (NYC). This work speaks to the journey that gay christians experience in communities of faith and society at large: the demand to 'cover' is insistent and pervasive within the church especially.

The publisher's note:

"In this remarkable and elegant work, acclaimed Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino fuses legal manifesto and poetic memoir to call for a redefinition of civil rights in our law and culture.
Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.
Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights."