LGBT rights in contemporary global politics: norms, identity, and the politics of rights
Date
2015
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) rights have emerged as a consequential issue in contemporary global politics. This is a worldwide phenomenon; same-sex marriage, for example, has been legalized in locales within North and South America, Europe, and Africa, while laws regulating same-sex intimacy have eroded within locales on every continent. This dissertation argues that this marks the emergence of a norm, embodied in a discourse asserting that states should legally enshrine LGBT rights. My intervention is to argue that norms, such as a norm regarding LGBT rights, do not contain any "fixed" content. Analysis of norms must focus on how they come to articulate historically contingent political alliances. This contingency foregrounds the importance of intersectionality, a feminist tool which focuses on how intersecting identity categories intensify the effects of power, to any comprehensive understanding of norms in IR.
I apply this framework to understanding an emergent LGBT rights norm in three contexts, all of which foreground particular political alliances formed in relation to an emergent discourse regarding LGBT rights. Chapter two explores the emergence of LGBT rights as an issue within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, used to assert the moral superiority of Israeli society, while framing Palestinians as unable to rule themselves. The next chapter examines the emergence of an anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. I consider how the rhetoric of the US Christian Right interfaced with existing cleavages within Ugandan society, creating a violent reaction against the perceived "threat" of LGBT rights. Chapter four explores legalization of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom. I argue that the UK's adoption of same-sex marriage must be contextualized alongside simultaneous enactment of exclusionary austerity and immigration policies.
I conclude that LGBT rights as a discourse can be employed to diverse ends in ways that reinforce power relationships of contemporary neoliberalism, particularly insofar as it appears to isolate LGBT rights from other forms of political struggle with which it intersects. However, the flexibility and contingency of rights claims also allow activists to creatively rearticulate the idea of LGBT rights in ways that can challenge neoliberalism's exclusionary and normalizing patterns of political alliance and identity.