The Struggle for LGBT Rights

Abstract

Seen from the perspective of scholars of both comparative politics and Eastern Europe, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) politics and gay rights are particularly instructive as lenses for considering the region's development since the epochal changes of 1989. Gay rights highlight the tension between traditional conceptions of national identity, which typically are hostile to homosexuality, and transnational discourses on minority rights. Following the European Union's enlargement to Eastern Europe beginning in 2004, the question of LGBT identity and rights began to generate much more scholarly attention, especially in the West. We may divide this literature into three thematic streams: focusing on communism's legacy; dealing with the formation of new identities after communism; and analysing the changing politics of homosexuality through the lens of transnational norm diffusion. The legacies branch focuses on the attitudinal and political cultural inheritance of communism.