Gay Rights Research Articles

Legal Study on Marriage Rights of Homosexuals in China

The issue of equality related to homosexuality has always been a hot spot in anti-discrimination. Through years of legal and cultural changes, the equal rights of homosexuals in China have been guaranteed to some extent. However, gay people in China have not been fully treated fairly, especially when it comes to marriage rights. Article 2 of the Marriage Act only regulates heterosexual marriage and does not cover same-sex marriage. This paper explores the legal status and challenges surrounding the marriage rights of homosexuals in China. By examining current legislation, judicial cases, and societal perspectives, the study identifies the legal barriers faced by the LGBTQ+ community in achieving marriage equality. Given that Chinese law currently does not recognize same-sex marriages, this research seeks to highlight the need for legal reforms to ensure equal treatment of homosexuals in marriage laws. The paper also proposes legal amendments, improved law enforcement, and societal education to foster greater inclusivity and fairness in China.

Public Support for Gay Rights Across Countries and Over Time

ABSTRACTObjectiveSupport for gay rights has increased in the publics of many countries over recent decades, but the scholarship on the topic has been hindered by the limited available data on these trends in public opinion. The goal of the Support for Gay Rights (SGR) dataset is to overcome this problem.MethodThe SGR dataset is constructed by combining a comprehensive collection of survey data with a latent‐variable model to provide annual time‐series estimates of public support for gay rights across 118 countries and over as many as 51 years that are comparable across space and time.ResultsWe show these data perform well in validation tests and demonstrate their potential by replicating the influential but recently questioned finding of Andersen and Fetner that more income inequality yields less tolerant and supportive attitudes toward gay people.ConclusionWe anticipate that the SGR data will become a crucial source for cross‐national, cross‐regional, and longitudinal research that improves our understanding of the sources and consequences of public support for gay rights.

Implementing Equality: State (Non)compliance With Judicial Revisions to Public Policy on Gay Rights

ABSTRACTBecause the civil rights movement accomplished many successes via litigation, advocacy communities regard courts as bulwarks against the legal enshrinement of oppression targeting vulnerable minorities. Advocates of LGBTQ equality are no different, identifying the judiciary as critical to eradicating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Standing alone, however, Supreme Court holdings revising the scope of civil rights for sexual minorities represent a change in policy formulation rather than implementation. Judicially directed reformulations of public policy require cooperation by officials responsible for implementation, and compliance rates with judicial directives vary. Here, I analyze state responses to two Supreme Court decisions involving sexual minorities: Lawrence v. Texas, decriminalizing sodomy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, invalidating state same‐sex marriage bans. Although adherence to Obergefell was swift and nearly universal, compliance outcomes for Lawrence have been uneven, as some states continue to enforce statutes that are materially equivalent to the “homosexual conduct” law reviewed in Lawrence. I argue compliance with Lawrence has lagged compared to Obergefell for the following three reasons: (1) linguistic imprecision in Lawrence; (2) divergent views of the right(s) at issue in each case; and (3) the absence of a federal executive regime credibly committed to the case's outcome.

Lesbian Activism in the LGBT Movement in Rosario (Argentina, 1987-1999). An Approach from Oral History and the Affective Turn

En este trabajo nos proponemos reflexionar sobre la participación lésbica en el movimiento LGBT de Rosario (Argentina) en la historia reciente. Pretendemos contribuir a la perspectiva de que la historia no tiene un centro y que es posible contrastar las visiones más oficiales a partir de la indagación desde nuevas u otras voces, gracias a la historia oral. En diálogo con el giro afectivo, el objetivo de este artículo es explicar la invisibilización y la subordinación de las lesbianas al interior del movimiento LGBT. Las respuestas a la pregunta por la supeditación de la identidad lésbica pueden fundarse en el peso de las estructuras de dominación heterocispatriarcales y en el orden de prioridades de las reivindicaciones de las diferentes identidades al interior del colectivo, en tanto las demandas específicamente lésbicas quedaron desdibujadas ante diferentes urgencias coyunturales, tales como la crisis del VIH -que afectó mayormente a los varones gays- y la violencia institucional hacia las identidades travestis-trans. Nuestra aspiración de fondo es contribuir al desarrollo de una historia lésbica de anclaje local-regional, que reconozca la agencia militante de las disidencias sexuales y problematice la centralidad que históricamente se le otorgó a Buenos Aires

Platformized production of homonationalism: An ethnography of queer media production in China

Queer media production research, almost exclusively conducted in the western context, predominantly focuses on the queer-capital interplay and overlooks the role of the state in contexts where the state remains the dominant force in limiting LGBTQ rights. In bridging queer media production with homonationalism, this paper presents an ethnographic account of Danlan, the longest-lasting commercial queer media in China. We demonstrate that Danlan is experimenting with a nationalism-infused, non-confrontational, and de-westernized approach to LGBTQ visibility that requires it to align with the Chinese authority and distance from the framework of LGBTQ advocacy deemed western. Situated in the context of platformization, homonationalism also functions as a template for workers at Danlan to facilitate everyday production while minimizing political risks and increasing traffic, which further complicates its social-political implications. We understand this form of homonationalism as a quotidian platform practice that relies on intentional self-depoliticization and alignment with the state to sustain itself.

Strange Sexual Encounters: Homonormativity as a Micropolitical Practice in Queer Sex

The concept of homonormativity has been widely successful in queer theory ever since its academic popularization by Lisa Duggan. When Duggan brought up what she named ‘the new homonormativity’, she was addressing a macropolitical reconfiguration of gay and lesbian movements and their alignment with the neoliberal asset. Homonormativity, however, is also to be tracked down in biopolitics, a form of disciplinary power that acts through regulation and includes micropolitical practices. The research question of this article originates from this latter dimension of the concept: how does homonormativity as a biopolitical disciplinary tool act on the bodies? Are sexual encounters, in Sara Ahmed’s terms, always ‘strange encounters’? The article analyzes how the notion of love as an uncontaminated dimension – springing from the heterosexual script of the couple – and the privatization of sexual encounters in hook-up culture both take part in the discursive regulation of queer sexual practices, with influence on the bodies, their actions, and their presence or absence. Homonormative narrations ultimately cast sexual partners as fundamentally Other and reinforce the neoliberal atomization and isolation of the Self. The privatization of sexual life thus not only erases the political aspect of queerness, but it also conceals embodied dynamics of power taking place within the sphere of the private.

Empowered Narratives: How BLK Magazine Used Advocacy Journalism to Represent Black LGBTQ People

ABSTRACT Despite the important role played by BLK magazine in the Black gay rights movement in the US, there is little scholarship focusing on the content of the magazine and how its pages gave voice and visibility to a marginalized population. Using archived issues of BLK, this paper conducted a qualitative content analysis of the articles published in the magazine from its inception in 1988 to its closure in 1994 to understand how the magazine used advocacy journalism to cover the Black LGBTQ community. Four themes emerged: Advocacy through representation, advocacy through critique and political intervention, advocacy through humanizing AIDS, and advocacy through analysis and interpretation. BLK acted as an advocate for the Black, gay community in various ways. Through its columns, briefs, cover stories, interviews, and news articles, BLK showed support for uplifting the community and addressing the problems it faced. More subtle support was visible in the choice of the stories that the magazine published and the voices it prioritized. The findings add to literature on the role of LGBTQ magazines in the gay rights movement in America and builds scholarship on the Black press’s coverage of gender and sexuality.

Examining the impact of cancer treatment on personhood: A participatory research investigation into the unique experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals

PurposeCancer incidence is growing in the UK population and will affect half of all individuals in their lifetime, with most new diagnoses occurring over the age of 60 years old. Despite legal reforms and liberation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) people's rights in recent years, many LGBTQ people affected by cancer will have faced significant societal discrimination in their lives. The aim of this research was to explore how cancer treatment impacts on the personhood of LGB people, and to increase understanding of social issues specific to this community. MethodsUnderpinned by person-centred principles and Critical Social Theory, a community-based participatory inquiry was carried out with nine LBG people who had been affected by cancer. In two subsequent sessions, participants created an identity map and then reflected on how cancer and care experiences had impacted their identity. Initially, content analysis of transcripts was informed by Mezirow's perspective transformation, followed by inductive thematic analysis within each data framework category. Participants were invited to provide feedback on the identified themes. ResultsThe processes of coming out and facing a cancer diagnosis emerged as significant crises, leading to personal transformation. Factors such as past experiences of homophobia, duration of being openly out, and confidence in embracing altered identities influence interactions with healthcare providers and the level of support received. ConclusionsThis research makes a unique contribution by shedding light on the unreported support needs of LGB individuals affected by cancer, suggesting the need for additional assistance.

Navigating Admissibility Before the European Court of Human Rights for Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Defenders

Abstract In recent years the rise of populist right-wing governments across Europe has led to concerns about infringements to lesbian and gay rights. Brave individuals bring cases against their states to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to test state compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. It is argued in this article that strict admissibility criteria before the ECtHR poses particular difficulties for lesbian and gay applicants. Specifically, the admissibility requirements of being (1) an individual victim, (2) to disallow anonymous applications and (3) to have suffered a ‘significant disadvantage’ are more challenging for lesbian and gay applicants to fulfil. It is concluded that enabling Representative Actions would provide greater possibilities for such individuals.

Intersectionality in the activity of lesbian and feminist movements in Ukraine

The article defines manifestations of the concept of intersectionality between Ukrainian feminist and lesbian movements. The research is based on the results of theoretical analysis and results of 13 semistructured in-depth interviews with 13 Ukrainian activists of feminist and lesbian movement from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr and Kherson, who were involved in feminist and lesbian movements in different periods – from the end of the 1990s to the beginning of the 2000s, in the mid-2000s and after 2014. As a result, the patterns of intersectionality between these two movements were defined.The concept of intersectional was defined in the mid-20th century by the American researcher Kimberle Crenshaw. It involved the rethinking of the concept of identity and social inequality under the influence of diverse individual experiences and socially significant characteristics. This concept became fundamental for the activity of new social movements at the end of the 20th century, in particular lesbian and feminist ones that are interrelated due to common resistance practices, ideological aspects, and people’s potential as well as the topic of the fight for women’s rights.Ukrainian feminist and lesbian movements are not exceptions, as they have manifested this intersectionality since their establishment as public social movements in Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This feature makes them different from the movements in countries of Western Europe and the USA, where lesbians used to be excluded from the mainstream feminist movement.After the analysis of in-depth interviews with activists of feminist and lesbian movements, it was defined that intersectionality between feminist and lesbian movements in Ukraine can be defined in ideological, thematical and practical aspects – common ideological basis, resistance practices represented in demonstrations, common actions, significant dates and topics, that prove that these 2 movements are interrelated and interconnected.

How does the rights of homosexuals be influenced by sodomy laws in the 1960s and 1970s

The paper examines the fight for homosexual rights in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on the significance of the abolition of sodomy laws and their impact on gay individuals. It highlights the cultural and legal context of the era, including the infamous Stonewall Riots of 1969, which sparked widespread activism. The essay delves into notable legal battles, such as Buchanan v. Batchelor, showcasing the efforts to challenge and repeal sodomy laws. Despite initial setbacks, these legal challenges laid the groundwork for future advancements in LGBTQ+ rights by establishing privacy rights as a constitutional issue. The period was crucial in setting the stage for further progress and the eventual dismantling of discriminatory laws against homosexuals.

SOMOS POLITICAL MOVEMENT: FROM THE EMERGENCE TO THE FRACTIONATION OF THE LGBTQIA+ STRUGGLE

This study aims to understand the emergence and consolidation of the LGBTQIA+ political movement in Brazil, focusing on the 1970s and 1980s. The study was guided by the question of how and why the LGBTQIA+ political movement originated in Brazil. The investigation followed a bibliographical and documentary research, anchored in the materialist-dialectical method. The theoretical support was provided by the works of Cruz (2018), Green (2018), Mott (2018), Quinallha (2022), Trevisan (2018) among other authors dedicated to the theoretical unveiling of the problem. The historical moment that gave rise to the movement, the importance of the mass communication process through the press, the internal political-ideological struggles for the conception of the LGBTQIA+ social and political movement and the reconfiguration of the homosexual movement in Brazil in the 1990s are highlighted. In the conclusion phase, the period is identified as fundamental for the organization of the initial struggles against homophobia and for the affirmation of the movement as instruments of collective struggles for rights.

Navigating Stigma Against At-Risk Sexual and Gender Minority Populations to End the HIV Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the past year, new laws criminalizing same-sex conduct and the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights have emerged as barriers to addressing the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). An augmented approach to addressing HIV within the region's disproportionately affected LGBTQ populations, particularly transgender women and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM), is imperative for achieving the international goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030. In this article, we present recommendations to bolster the continuum of HIV care for MSM and transgender women in SSA.

Legacy of the Religious Right and the U.S. Presidential Election of 1980

Political parties have evolved throughout the history of the United States, yet we have never seen such a polarizing state of politics as we see in 2024. Through the use of academic journals and speeches, this paper explains the turbulent state of U.S. politics by exploring the increased involvement of the Religious Right in politics. Starting with the history of the Religious Right and focusing on the U.S. presidential election in 1980, this paper outlines how the increased activity of the Religious Right has caused a divide in American politics. It will discuss how the presidential election of 1980 solidified a religious voting bloc. The paper also reviews the increased use of religious rhetoric especially during George W. Bush’s presidency (2001-2009). This paper finds that the inclusion of religion in secular matters has proven to be provocative. Yet, the Religious Right strives to protect the “traditional family” by encouraging participation in politics, especially on topics such as abortion, women’s rights, and gay rights.

The Evolution of Public Opinion Over Gay Rights in Switzerland

At the same time as support for LGB rights and tolerance of homosexuality has increased among western democracies, there has also been a strong backlash. How can these two trends be reconciled? This article answers that question by considering the distribution of public opinion over LGB rights in Switzerland. Using a novel method, this article shows how Swiss citizens have become more polarized over LGB rights, not between those who favor and those who oppose but between those who strongly favor and the ambivalent. Some people on the right are also increasingly divided amongst themselves. The key driver is the growing impact party identity has on people’s social attitudes like acceptance of pro-LGB policies. Results from Switzerland suggest we will find increased polarization in other democracies where the cultural political spectrum has become salient.

The discursive construction of tradition and modernity in counter-homophobic discourses in China

ABSTRACT This study investigates the counter-homophobic discursive construction of tradition and modernity in China, focusing on Sina Weibo users’ comments on anti-same-sex marriage arguments. The study reveals how proponents of same-sex marriage in China actively imagine and project a China that is inclusive of gay rights by (re)constructing China’s tradition as tolerant of homosexuality and positioning China’s pursuit of development and modernity as entailing gay rights development. Yet, analysis shows that the discursive construction of tradition may potentially romanticize China’s tradition as if it were devoid of homophobia, and the discursive construction of modernity, by representing China’s gay rights development as merely playing catch-up with the purportedly already modernized West, sometimes implicitly produces a homonationalist binary of modernism versus traditionalism. However, from a postcolonial transnational perspective, the paper argues that contrary to the homocolonialist representation of China as essentially homophobic, these discursive practices may work partially to confront and contest Western exceptionalism.

Education and ideological polarisation: Cross‐country evidence and recommendations for higher education

AbstractIn many developed countries, disagreement on important policy issues between groups with different social identities (‘ideological polarisation’) is increasing. In professional settings, these disagreements undermine cooperation and trust between employees, which negatively affects work relationships and managerial decision‐making. We investigate whether people with more education tend to express attitudes that are more (or less) polarised. Using nationally representative data for 18 OECD countries from 2010 to 2018, we find that in most countries, ideological polarisation between liberals (political left) and conservatives (political right) on three key policy issues (income inequality, immigration and gay rights) increases with education. This ‘education–polarisation’ gradient varies across countries, is strongest in the United States and is linked to stronger alignment between political ideology and non‐political values, and greater internet use among more‐educated individuals. This finding can explain why polarisation can persist and even increase, despite the growing availability of information. We conclude with implications and recommendations for higher education.

Consuming acceptance: Media consumption as LGBT activism in contemporary Japan

The Japanese live-action TV adaptations of Kinō Nani Tabeta? (2019) and complement and develop widespread efforts to teach LGBT issues in contemporary Japan. As the series’ content often repudiates common LGBT and gender stereotypes in the same forms found in non-fiction media, public discourse surrounding the works lauds their depiction of ‘real’ same-sex relationships. This article analyses the series’ ‘real’ positioning through theories regarding the transmedia development of everyday participatory spaces. The series’ social instruction is echoed in their fixation on recipes made available through associated marketing materials. The combination of content lessons and participation-based marketing creates a visible spectacle of LGBT activism characterized by transmissible instructions shown as achievable in the home lives of participants. That home focus is, however, inseparable from the series’ respectability politics, which use the buzz of visibility to display invisible existences aligned with public normativity. The LGBT awareness promoted by these texts and their surrounding discourse can be read as an addition to contemporary advocacy that positions minorities as non-disruptive societal outsiders. By making invisible lifestyles replicable, these works deploy transmedia forms to construct transmission-based intimacy that is ultimately confined to personal consumption.

LGBT - A GLOBAL ISSUE: SOCIAL IMPACT PREVENTIVE SOLUTION FROM QURANIC PERSPECTIVE (STUDY OF QURANIC CHAPTER AL-A‘RAF [7]: 80-81)

The LGBT Problem is a hotly vulnerable discussion in 2021-2024. This is marked by the emergence of many movements from activists and sympathizers of LGBT supporters who ask for their rights in public spaces, such as the rights of society in general. The presence of a movement that advocates equality for LGBT people has a close relationship with the people of Prophet Lut (‘Alaih As-Salam), who have a different sexual orientation from humans in general, which in Arabic, is called liwatat (sodomy). The campaign effort was then carried out openly in the public. This study aims to analyze the practice of LGBT from an Islamic perspective based on the Quranic chapter Al-A‘raf verses 80-81. The results showed that the emergence of LGBT movements and campaigns today are an inseparable part of the story of Prophet Lut’s society, which has an unusual sexual orientation. The condition is caused by environmental, psychological, and theological factors. The rise of efforts to voice the equality of Human Rights openly has an impact on society in various aspects, including in the elements of health, society, education, and security. Thus, preventive solutions are needed to fend off the LGBT behaviour such as through education of faith and Islamic SharÊ‘ah, besides moral, psychiatric, social and sexual education.

Dru Cornell on resisting patriarchy: The common grounds of feminism and gay rights

Dru Cornell on resisting patriarchy: The common grounds of feminism and gay rights