Ever since certain homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1969, queer activists have fought for – and won – a series of public policy battles in governments across Canada. As Queer Mobilizations shows, anti-discrimination legislation, the extension of benefits to same-sex couples, the right to marry, adoption rights, and the protection of gay-straight alliances in schools did not result from a single act nor from the work of a single organization but rather from the concerted efforts of many people, in many places, over many years. This volume examines the relationships between LGBTQ activists and local, provincial, and federal governments. The contributors explore how various governments have tried to regulate and repress LGBTQ movements, and how, in turn, queer activists have successfully shaped public policy, across the political spectrum, from city halls to the House of Commons.

"This innovative collection of essays delves into the complex relationships between social movements and legal institutions. The essays creatively address the contradictory goals in the battles for social change by LGBT movements and the normalization that can often result from legal decisions. (Peter M. Nardi)--Cover, page 4.

Fighting for marriage and family rights; protection from discrimination in employment, education, and housing; criminal law reform; economic justice; and health care reform: the LGBT movement is engaged in some of the most important cultural and political battles of our times. Seeking to reshape many of our basic social institutions, the LBGT movement’s legal, political, and cultural campaigns reflect the complex visions, strategies, and rhetoric of the individuals and groups knocking at the law’s door. The original essays in this volume bring social movement scholarship and legal analysis together, enriching our understanding of social movements, LGBT politics and organizing, legal studies, and public policy. Moreover, they highlight the struggle to make the law relevant and responsive to the LGBT community. Ultimately, Queer Mobilizations examines how the LGBT movement’s engagement with the law shapes the very meanings of sexuality, sex, gender, privacy, discrimination, and family in law and society. Contributors: Ellen Ann Andersen, Steven A. Boutcher, Bayliss Camp, Casey Charles, Ashley Currier, Courtenay W. Daum, Shauna Fisher, David John Frank, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Charles W. Gossett, Marybeth Herald, Nicholas Pedriana, Darren Rosenblum, Susan M. Sterett, and Amy L. Stone.

Ever since certain homosexual acts were decriminalized in 1969, queer activists have fought for - and won - a series of public policy battles in governments across Canada. As Queer Mobilizations shows, anti-discrimination legislation, the extension of benefits to same-sex couples, the right to marry, adoption rights, and the protection of gay-straight alliances in schools did not result from a single act nor from the work of a single organization but rather from the concerted efforts of many people, in many places, over many years.

The 1990s and early 2000s were heady days for Indian queer people and their networks as they emerged from the shadows. They grouped together to deal with covert and overt forms of stigma, discrimination, and violence in different spheres of life. Tracing the life stories of around a dozen queer individuals and their allies from eastern India, Out of Line and Offline dwells on the many ways in which queer communities were mobilized in the first decade of the movement in India, and how such mobilization affected the lives of queer people in the long run. Pawan Dhall draws on in-depth interviews, which generate compelling stories of individual lives and experiences amid a society that was slowly being pressured to change. Dhall also delves into the archives of some of the earliest queer support forums in eastern India to reveal the ways in which the movement developed and grew. A thoroughly researched and poignantly human document, this volume will find an important place in the canon of literature on queer movements across the world.

This collection provides a deep engagement with the political implication of Black Lives Matter. This book covers a broad range of topics using a variety of methods and epistemological approaches. In the twenty-first century, the killings of Black Americans have sparked a movement to end the brutality against Black bodies. In 2013, #BlackLivesMatter would become a movement-building project led by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. This movement began after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The movement has continued to fight for racial justice and has experienced a resurgence following the 2020 slayings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, Tony McDade, and David McAtee among others. The continued protests raise questions about how we can end this vicious cycle and lead Blacks to a state of normalcy in the United States. In other words, how can we make any advances made by Black Lives Matter stick? The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) was founded in 1990 as the first NGO devoted to advancing LGBT human rights worldwide. How, this book asks, is that mission translated into practice? What do transnational LGBT human rights advocates do on a day-to-day basis and for whom? Understanding LGBT human rights claims is impossible, Ryan R. Thoreson contends, without knowing the answers to these questions. In Transnational LGBT Activism, Thoreson argues that the idea of LGBT human rights is not predetermined but instead is defined by international activists who establish what and who qualifies for protection. He shows how IGLHRC formed and evolved, who is engaged in this work, how they conceptualize LGBT human rights, and how they have institutionalized their views at the United Nations and elsewhere. After a full year of in-depth research in New York City and Cape Town, South Africa, Thoreson is able to reconstruct IGLHRC’s early campaigns and highlight decisive shifts in the organization’s work from its founding to the present day. Using a number of high-profile campaigns for illustration, he offers insight into why activists have framed particular demands in specific ways and how intergovernmental advocacy shapes the claims that activists ultimately make. The result is a uniquely balanced, empirical response to previous impressionistic and reductive critiques of Western human rights activists—and a clarifying perspective on the nature and practice of global human rights advocacy.

Social movements provide the engine of legal change and law itself spurs social movement activity. This issue includes articles on social movements in several different nations, including France, South Africa and Canada, asking us to consider the way context is reflected in movement activities.

This dissertation traces the history of lesbian and gay travel during the twentieth century with the aim of understanding how global circuits of exchange have shaped lesbian and gay activism in the U.S. Placing feminist and queer studies in conversation with mobility studies, I analyze the militarized relations of power at play within travel practices in order to illuminate the transnational dimensions of U.S. sexual subjects and sexual politics.In the past few decades, as activists have adopted new strategies for enacting social change, new modes of mobility have gained importance within the realm of lesbian and gay politics. This dissertation specifically considers lesbian and gay activists from the U.S. who advocate for the right to be deployed by the military, who participate in international exchanges to spread human rights, and who create opportunities to vacation with their families. I situate my investigation of contemporary travel within broader histories of mobility, sexuality, and modern subject formation, but my interest lies in how neoliberalism - as both an economic program and a mode of governmentality - produces new political subjectivities and newly configured desires for mobility. My project breaks from the tendency for studies of lesbian and gay travel to focus on the leisure practices of privileged travelers and to celebrate the visibility of lesbian and gay tourists as cosmopolitan consumers. In distinction, I broaden the question of travel beyond an investigation of tourism alone in order to outline the continuities across different mobilities and to ask how racially and economically marginalized subjects do and do not participate in these forms of travel. Through an examination of the legacies of colonialism and technologies of war undergirding lesbian and gay travel, this dissertation seeks to understand why U.S. lesbian and gay activism often works in synchrony with nationalism, militarization, and global capitalism and unwittingly upholds racialized sexual hierarchies, gendered economic structures, and hierarchies of dis/ability. At the same time, I remain attentive to inconsistencies and ambivalences within military deployments, cultural exchanges, and family vacations, and I explore the ways in which these disruptions open space for more radical modes of transnational queer politics.

This book addresses LGBTQ issues in relation to among others law and policy, mobility and migration, children and family, social well-being and identity, visible and invisible landscapes, teaching and instruction, parades, arts and cartography and mapping. A variety of research methods are used to explore identities, communities, networks and landscapes, all which can be used in subsequent research and classroom instruction and disciplinary and interdisciplinary levels. This extensive book stimulates future pioneering research ventures in rural and urban settings about existing and proposed LGBTQ policies, individual and group mapping, visible and invisible spaces, and the construction of public and private spaces. Through the methodologies and rich bibliographies, this book provides a rich source for future comparative research of scholars working in social work, NGOs and public policy, and community networking and development.