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Published in Reviews and Critical Commentary: http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/post-marriage-lgbt-politics-in-spain/ ; Council of European Studies

This dissertation examines the impact of litigation on a social movement's dominant substantive goals and message. While scholars have devoted substantial attention to the study of social movement litigation, research in this area typically focuses on how social movements affect substantive law, or more broadly, how a movement's legal tactics bring about social change. By contrast, my focus in this dissertation is on how litigation affects the social movement itself. In particular, how does litigation as a tactic shape a social movement's collective agenda? How does it affect which perspective among possible competing visions comes to define the movement?I investigate these dynamics through a case study of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement from 1985 to 2008. The study involves three phases of original empirical research, each of which investigates a potential mechanism that may privilege litigation over other tactics in its ability to set the LGBT movement's primary substantive agenda. First, I use a content analysis of newspaper coverage of LGBT politics to determine which movement tactics have received the most media visibility. Second, I perform a statistical analysis of LGBT organizations to determine which movement tactics have been most associated with organizational survival and stability. Third, I perform a qualitative analysis of a subset of those LGBT organizations to examine variation in the strategy-formation processes used by primarily litigation-, lobbying-, or protest-based movement groups.The media content analysis revealed that litigation received more news coverage than any other LGBT movement tactic, suggesting that litigation had greater visibility than other tactics. In addition, the statistical analysis revealed that the movement organizations that used litigation had greater survival rates than other types of LGBT movement organizations, suggesting that litigation has been a particularly stable feature of LGBT politics. The qualitative analysis of LGBT organizations revealed further insights into how litigation may influence the agendas of non-legal movement actors. Whereas litigating LGBT movement groups proactively pursued preplanned organizational priorities, protest groups formed their agendas reactively, focusing on the issues covered by the mainstream media. This phenomenon appears to have diverted protest groups away from their original priorities and toward the issues that the media found newsworthy. Given my findings that litigation coverage dominated news headlines, the processes identified here may enable litigation to dominate protest activism as well. Taken together, these findings suggest that the media visibility and stability of social movement litigation may contribute to the prominence of litigation and cause legal goals to dominate the movement's overall substantive agenda. I describe this process as the "legalization" of a social movement's agenda.This dissertation makes a novel contribution to existing scholarship by exposing systemic processes that may privilege movement litigation relative to protest, elevating the issues being litigated to top movement priorities. Significant implications follow for theories of law and social change. Focusing on litigation narrows a movement's agenda because courts offer a forum for only those grievances that can be translated into legal claims. This may be particularly problematic for movements that base their legal claims in antidiscrimination law, which has become settled around quite limited understandings of equality as formal access to equal opportunity and discrimination as an intentional, individual harm. This interpretation not only denies remedies for the structural factors most responsible for perpetuating inequality, it also places the focus on preventing individual wrongdoing rather than producing substantive outcomes. Thus, when antidiscrimination litigation comes to define an equality movement's priorities, the movement may find itself privileging issues with little hope of creating substantive social transformation.

The LGBT or sexual diversity movement in Nicaragua, which was repressed by the FSLN in the 1980s, is currently supported by that party. I argue that this change in the FSLN's policy responds to shifting international frames regarding sexuality and human rights as well as to efforts to separate the LGBT movement from its allies in the feminist movement, and efforts to incorporate the LGBT movement into the FSLN's clientelistic networks. Despite real gains for LGBT activists as a result of these new policies, ultimately the FSLN has offered sexual diversity activists far more in the area of culture than rights.

On June 28, 1969, a small gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood, The Stonewall Inn, was raided by the police. Rather than the norm of passive consent to the police, the patrons began to fight back leading to an all-out riot in the streets of lower Manhattan. The Stonewall Riot is referred to by many as the turning point in the struggle for gay rights

The politics of gay and transgender visibility and representation at the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual televised popular music festival presented to viewers as a contest between European nations, show that processes of interest to Queer International Relations do not just involve states or even international institutions; national and transnational popular geopolitics over 'LGBT rights' and 'Europeanness' equally constitute the understandings of 'the international' with which Queer IR is concerned. Building on Cynthia Weber's reading the persona of the 2014 Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst with 'queer intellectual curiosity', this paper demonstrates that Eurovision shifted from, in the late 1990s, an emerging site of gay and trans visibility to, by 2008–14, part of a larger discursive circuit taking in international mega-events like the Olympics, international human-rights advocacy, Europe/Russia relations, and the politics of state homophobia and transphobia. Contest organisers thus had to take positions – ranging from detachment to celebration – about 'LGBT' politics in host states and the Eurovision region. The construction of spatio-temporal hierarchies around attitudes to LGBT rights, however, revealed exclusions that corroborate other critical arguments on the reconfiguration of national and European identities around 'LGBT equality'.

Russian slash practices are much more than a protest subculture—a reductionist term that implies an unchanging isolation from other public realms. The political significance of slash practices on the Russian-language Internet, Runet, is more effectively understood by examining how slash and slashers travel from fannish to other public spaces to shape everyday political conversations about sexual politics in Russia.

1. Human rights, LGBT rights, and international theory / Anthony J. Langlois -- 2. To love or to loathe : modernity, homophobia, and LGBT rights / Michael J. Bosia -- 3. LGBT and (Dis)United Nations : sexual and gender minorities, international law, and UN politics / Francine D'Amico -- 4. Transversal and particularistic politics in the European Union's antidiscrimination policy : LGBT politics under neoliberalism / Markus Thiel -- 5. Sexual diffusions and conceptual confusions : Muslim homophobia and Muslim homosexualities in the context of modernity / Momin Rahman -- 6. Peripheral prides : Amazon perspectives on LGBT politics / Manuela Lavinas Picq -- 7. Between the universal and the particular : the politics of recognition of LGBT rights in Turkey / Mehmet Sinan Birdal -- 8. Queering security studies in Northern Ireland : problem, practice, and practitioner / Sandra McEvoy.

This volume combines empirically oriented and theoretically grounded reflections upon various forms of LGBT activist engagement to examine how the notion of intersectionality enters the political context of contemporary Serbia and Croatia. By uncovering experiences of multiple oppression and voicing fear and frustration that accompany exclusionary practices, the contributions to this book seek to reinvigorate the critical potential of intersectionality, in order to generate the basis for wider political alliances and solidarities in the post-Yugoslav space. The authors, both activists and academics, challenge the systematic absence of discussions of (post- )Yugoslav LGBT activist initiatives in recent social science scholarship, and show how emancipatory politics of resistance can reshape what is possible to imagine as identity and community in post-war and post-socialist societies. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the areas of history and politics of Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav states, as well as to those working in the fields of political sociology, European studies, social movements, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, and queer theory and activism.

Resumen: A partir de un seguimiento de políticas (gubernamentales, de los movimientos sociales y de la vida cotidiana) en la ciudad de Bogotá (Colombia), relacionadas con la ampliación de ciudadanías sexuales, este artículo trata sobre los territorios morales que dichas políticas crean, y sobre los cuerpos que desea el Estado o que reclaman ser deseados por él. Particularmente se analizan la 'política LGBT' y la 'política gay' en un contexto local y su paradójica contribución a la normalización de la disidencia sexual y de género. Palabras clave: sexualidad; fronteras morales; LGBT; travesti; políticas sexuales Fronteiras morais e políticas sexuais: apontamentos sobre "a política LGBT" e o desejo do Estado Resumo: A partir do acompanhamento de políticas (governamentais, dos movimentos sociais e da vida cotidiana) na cidade de Bogotá (Colômbia), em relação com a ampliação de cidadanias sexuais, este artigo trata dos territórios morais que criam tais políticas e dos corpos que deseja o Estado ou que reclamam ser desejados por ele. Particularmente, analisam-se "a política LGBT" e "a política gay" em um contexto local e a sua paradoxal contribuição para a normalização da dissidência sexual e de gênero. Palavras-chave: sexualidade; fronteiras morais; LGBT; travesti; políticas sexuais Moral Boundaries and Sexual Politics: Notes on 'LGBT Politics' and the desire of the State Abstract: Based on an analysis of government policy, social movement activism, and politics of the everyday life in Bogotá (Colombia), about the expansion of sexual citizenship, this article delves on the moral territories created around those politics, and the bodies desired by the State, or bodies that want to be desired by the State. In particular, it discusses 'LGBT politics' and 'gay policy' in a local context, and its paradoxical contribution to the normalization of sexual and gender dissidence. Keywords: sexuality; moral boundaries; LGBT; transgender; sexual politics

Using videorecorded data from canvassing interviews between activists and voters in Los Angeles, this thesis examines the ideologies of sexuality that emerge in conversation through the interactive construction of argumentative reasoning and socio-semiotic processes of ideological representation. Analysis focuses on the discursive connections canvassers and voters draw between attitudes toward LGBT politics and beliefs about what causes a person to be gay or bisexual. In contrast to ideologies circulated by the mass media, the data demonstrate broad variation in how voters' stances on politics and morality are tied to their own presentations of self and whether they believe homosexuality is something people choose, are influenced toward, or are born with. Nonetheless, canvassers misrecognize this variation and generate restrictive ideological representations through processes of iconization, erasure, and dichotomic replication. In order to better promote LGBT political causes, I call on activists to rethink their persuasive strategies in light of these findings.

Why do municipal governments adopt lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) inclusive policies? The preponderance of literature suggests urbanism and social diversity are the most likely explanations for LGBT municipal policies. This research tests these assumptions using the morality politics model. Using rare-events logistic regression, municipalities in the state of Florida with LGBT antidiscrimination ordinances are compared with municipalities that do not have such policies. The results contradict theories of urbanism and highlight the shortcomings of the morality politics model. Specifically, the results indicate that even under highly salient conditions, LGBT advocacy resources play an important role in the policy adoption process.