Latin America’s Gay-Rights Revolution

Issue Date April 2011
Volume 22
Issue 2
Page Numbers 104-118
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This essay explains the gay-rights revolution in Latin America marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina. Among the factors examined are the use of human-rights rhetoric to end anti-gay discrimination, the employment of the Internet to mainstream gay culture, the creation of a gay market to leverage clout for the gay community, and critical alliances with the political establishment. These explanations suggest that the Latin American gay-rights revolution is rooted in political strategizing rather than in social change, which explains the paradoxical trend of rising anti-gay violence in the midst of a gay-rights boom.

About the Author

Omar G. Encarnación is the Charles Flint Kellogg professor of politics at Bard College. He is the author of Democracy without Justice in Spain: The Politics of Forgetting (2014) and Out in the Periphery: Latin America’s Gay Rights Revolution (2016).

View all work by Omar G. Encarnación