This book explores the alleged uniqueness of the European experience, and investigates its ties to a long history of LGBT and queer movements in the region. These movements, the book argues, were inspired by specific ideas about Europe, which they sought to realize on the ground through activism.

This book explores the alleged uniqueness of the European experience, and investigates its ties to a long history of LGBT and queer movements in the region. These movements, the book argues, were inspired by specific ideas about Europe, which they sought to realize on the ground through activism.

How homophobic backlash unexpectedly strengthened mobilization for LGBT political rights in post-communist Europe While LGBT activism has increased worldwide, there has been strong backlash against LGBT people in Eastern Europe. Although Russia is the most prominent anti-gay regime in the region, LGBT individuals in other post-communist countries also suffer from discriminatory laws and prejudiced social institutions. Combining an historical overview with interviews and case studies in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, Conor O’Dwyer analyzes the development and impact of LGBT movements in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe. O’Dwyer argues that backlash against LGBT individuals has had the paradoxical effect of encouraging stronger and more organized activism, significantly impacting the social movement landscape in the region. As these peripheral Eastern and Central European countries vie for inclusion or at least recognition in the increasingly LGBT-friendly European Union, activist groups and organizations have become even more emboldened to push for change. Using fieldwork in five countries and interviews with activists, organizers, and public officials, O’Dwyer explores the intricacies of these LGBT social movements and their structures, functions, and impact. The book provides a unique and engaging exploration of LGBT rights groups in Eastern and Central Europe and their ability to serve as models for future movements attempting to resist backlash. Thorough, theoretically grounded, and empirically sound, Coming Out of Communism is sure to be a significant work in the study of LGBT politics, European politics, and social movements.

During the past four decades, the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights movement has made significant advances, but millions of LGBT people continue to live in fear in nations where homosexuality remains illegal. The International LGBT Rights Movement offers a comprehensive account of this global force, from its origins in the mid-nineteenth century to its crucial place in world affairs today. Belmonte examines the movement's goals, the disputes about its mission, and its rise to international importance. The International LGBT Rights Movement provides a thorough introduction to the movement's history, highlighting key figures, controversies, and organizations. With a global scope that considers both state and non-state actors, the book explores transnational movements to challenge homophobia, while also assessing the successes and failures of these efforts along the way.

Focusing on the transnational LGBT movement that has gained unprecedented momentum, this study is a timely contribution to debates both scholarly and popular.

The story of gay rights has long been told as one of single-minded focus on the fight for sexual freedom. Yet its origins are much more complicated than this single-issue interpretation would have us believe, and to ignore gay liberation's multidimensional beginnings is to drastically underestimate its radical potential for social change. Ferguson shows how queer liberation emerged out of various insurgent struggles crossing the politics of race, gender, class, and sexuality, and deeply connected to issues of colonization, incarceration, and capitalism. Tracing the rise and fall of this intersectional politics, he argues that the one-dimensional mainstreaming of queerness falsely placed critiques of racism, capitalism, and the state outside the remit of gay liberation. As recent activism is increasingly making clear, this one-dimensional legacy has promoted forms of exclusion that marginalize queers of color, the poor, and transgender individuals. This forceful book joins the call to reimagine and reconnect the fight for social justice in all its varied forms.

Queer activism and anthropology are both fundamentally concerned with the concept of difference. Yet they are so in fundamentally different ways. The Italian queer activists in this book value difference as something that must be produced, in opposition to the identity politics they find around them. Conversely, anthropologists find difference in the world around them, and seek to produce an identity between anthropological theory and the ethnographic material it elucidates. This book describes problems faced by an activist "politics of difference," and issues concerning the identity of anthropological reflection itself—connecting two conceptions of difference whilst simultaneously holding them apart.

Struggles for LGBT rights and the security of sexual and gender minorities are ongoing, urgent concerns across the world. For students, scholars, and activists who work on these and related issues, this handbook provides a unique, interdisciplinary resource. In chapters by both emerging and senior scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics introduces key concepts in LGBT political studies and queer theory. Additionally, the handbook offers historical, geographic, and topical case studies contexualized within theoretical frameworks from the sociology of sexualities, critical race studies, postcolonialism, indigenous theories, social movement theory, and international relations theory. It provides readers with up-to-date empirical material and critical assessments of the analytical significance, commonalities, and differences of global LGBT politics. The forward-looking analysis of state practice, transnational networks, and historical context presents crucial perspectives and opens new avenues for debate, dialogue, and theory.

Popular narratives cite religion as the driving force behind homophobia in Africa, portraying Christianity and LGBT expression as incompatible. Without denying Christianity’s contribution to the stigma, discrimination, and exclusion of same-sex-attracted and gender-variant people on the continent, Adriaan van Klinken presents an alternative narrative, foregrounding the ways in which religion also appears as a critical site of LGBT activism. Taking up the notion of “arts of resistance,” Kenyan, Christian, Queer presents four case studies of grassroots LGBT activism through artistic and creative expressions—including the literary and cultural work of Binyavanga Wainaina, the “Same Love” music video produced by gay gospel musician George Barasa, the Stories of Our Lives anthology project, and the LGBT-affirming Cosmopolitan Affirming Church. Through these case studies, Van Klinken demonstrates how Kenyan traditions, black African identities, and Christian beliefs and practices are being navigated, appropriated, and transformed in order to allow for queer Kenyan Christian imaginations. Transdisciplinary in scope and poignantly intimate in tone, Kenyan, Christian, Queer opens up critical avenues for rethinking the nature and future of the relationship between Christianity and queer activism in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.

Struggles for LGBT rights and the security of sexual and gender minorities are ongoing, urgent concerns across the world. For students, scholars, and activists who work on these and related issues, this handbook provides a unique, interdisciplinary resource. In chapters by both emerging and senior scholars, the Oxford Handbook of Global LGBT and Sexual Diversity Politics introduces key concepts in LGBT political studies and queer theory. Additionally, the handbook offers historical, geographic, and topical case studies contexualized within theoretical frameworks from the sociology of sexualities, critical race studies, postcolonialism, indigenous theories, social movement theory, and international relations theory. It provides readers with up-to-date empirical material and critical assessments of the analytical significance, commonalities, and differences of global LGBT politics. The forward-looking analysis of state practice, transnational networks, and historical context presents crucial perspectives and opens new avenues for debate, dialogue, and theory.