Title

Tax Protest, A Homosexual, and Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation

Comments

forthcoming in the Saint Louis University Public Law Review

Abstract

In this contribution to a symposium entitled Out of the Closet and Into the Light: The Legal Issues of Sexual Orientation, I recount and then ponder the story of Robert Mueller. Mueller, a gay man, spent more than a decade protesting the discriminatory treatment of gays and lesbians under the Internal Revenue Code. As a result of his tax protest, Mueller was jailed for more than a year, and then was twice pursued by the IRS for taxes and penalties. In pondering Mueller's story, I consider it both as a telling example of the forcible closeting of gay and lesbian issues in tax and as a signpost pointing in the direction of the next front in the battle for gay rights.

Disciplines

Sexuality and the Law | Tax Law

Date of this Version

8-3-2004

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