Suchergebnisse

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.

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.

Linguistic and anthropological analyses of the globalization of sexual frameworks typically emphasize how putatively global models remain disjunctive with localized understandings. Few scholars have examined how NGOs in the Global North compile the information needed to advocate for LGBT rights, much of which is generated by activists in the Global South. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork at a Northern-based LGBT human rights NGO to explore how brokers produce and circulate knowledge amidst the complex challenges of information politics. As brokers of information, activists face structural, linguistic, and technological impediments that complicate their work. They also grapple with doubts about facticity, motives, and potential repercussions that affect whether information is deemed "good enough" for advocacy. Understanding how activists practically navigate these challenges is critical as linguists and anthropologists move beyond reductive global-local dichotomies and advocates seek to do solidarity work as effectively and responsibly as possible.

AbstractIn the EU accession literature, there is a tendency to downplay the role of discourse in facilitating norm diffusion, particularly when domestic resistance towards European norms is strong. The assumptions in this thinking are that critical deliberations and civil society activism simply lack the potency required to elicit norm conforming behaviour in accession states and that the only realistic hope for achieving this rests with the introduction of material incentives that make the costs of normative adaptation lower than its rewards. I focus on developments in the field of LGBT politics to challenge these assumptions and to specify the conditions under which discursive strategies are likely to stimulate the domestic uptake of contentious norms. I highlight shared identity as a crucial factor in the success of discursive influence, contending that under conditions of identity convergence, a cultural environment prevails in which norm promoters can more effectively ignite a process of deliberative reflection, shame norm-violators into conformance and cultivate resonance around controversial ideas. I develop these arguments through an analysis of LGBT and accession politics in Croatia and Serbia, contending that Croatia's strong identification with Europe accelerated LGBT recognition there while Serbia's relatively weaker identification with Europe slowed it down.

The development of the civil society in Poland post-1989 has put the LGBT movement on the map of the country's social landscape. As a corollary, it has also led to a greater social engagement of the non-heterosexual community striving for recognition of its demands. The establishment of the Campaign Against Homophobia (KPH) and the spread of the Internet in Poland have raised the Polish society's awareness of the LGBT movement and made it part of the country's political discourse. On the other hand, the perceived threat to the established conservative values of the Polish society has galvanised the opponents of the non-heterosexual community and its demands. The resulting dispute between the supporters and opponents of the LGBT movement and its professed ideas has placed the issue on the agenda of the Polish political parties.

What motivates individuals to participate in contentious, political forms of collective action? In this article, I consider the possibility that the promise of social esteem from an ingroup can act as a powerful selective incentive for individuals to participate in contentious politics. I conducted a field experiment-the first to my knowledge to take place in the context of a political march, rally, or social-identity event-to isolate this esteem mechanism from others. Using measures of intent to attend, actual attendance, and reported attendance at a gay and lesbian pride event in New Jersey, I find evidence that the promise of social esteem boosts all three measures of participation. The article offers new theoretical and practical implications for the study of participation in nonvoting forms of collective action. Adapted from the source document.

Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, has seen a sudden attempt to establish LGBT politics during the last 5 years, due to movement mobilization and favourable local and European opportunity structures. The article suggests a multiscalar analysis of Thessaloniki Prides, which takes into account politics articulated by a series of actors located in distinct scales. These actors include institutional and religious authorities, as well as the local LGBT movement. The analysis demonstrates that Thessaloniki Prides are shaped by conflicting discursive blocks articulated through the national, urban/local, and transnational scale. Prides, as the most visible outcome of the local LGBT movement, become a collective action, which is shaped and continuously challenged by its embeddedness in these scales. This analysis brings new insights into the geo-temporal politics of LGBT politics, reminding that European periphery's sexual politics are located in a nexus of progressive cosmopolitanism and nationalist anti-modernity. In fact, the Thessaloniki case demonstrates that being part of the Western periphery places sexual politics between a globalist EU-ized discourse of modernity on the one hand and anti-secular views on heteronormative traditions on the other. Such a space is the setting where grassroots LGBTQ movements perform their politics.

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 'lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights' and 'Europeanness' equally constitute the understandings of 'the international' with which Queer International Relations is concerned. Building on Cynthia Weber's reading the persona of the 2014 Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst with 'queer intellectual curiosity', this article demonstrates that Eurovision shifted from, in the late 1990s, an emerging site of gay and trans visibility to, by 2008–2014, 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 'lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender' politics in host states and the Eurovision region. The construction of spatio-temporal hierarchies around attitudes to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, however, revealed exclusions that corroborate other critical arguments on the reconfiguration of national and European identities around 'lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality'.

Despite the major breakthrough for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists on marriage equality, the fight against employment discrimination remains elusive. Whether one is protected from discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity depends on where one lives and is contingent on a patchwork of state and local policies. In this article, we investigate the adoption of state nondiscrimination laws that are inclusive of sexual orientation between 1980 and 2009. Findings from our event history analysis of policy adoption contribute to the study of social movements and LGBT politics in three ways. First, and consistent with social movement theory, we find countermovement opposition to gay rights as well as pro-LGBT political opportunities to be critical. Second, we find organization and opportunity to fluctuate in importance over time, underscoring the need for historically informed analyses that seriously consider when key actors should matter for social movement outcomes. Third, we produce new state-level estimates of public opinion of nondiscrimination laws. We show that while very high levels of public support are common for states that adopt nondiscrimination laws, they are not enough on their own, particularly in the face of opposition.