This article examines the Spanish gay and lesbian movement, and discusses its role in the legalization of same-sex marriages. The main focus is on the interplay between gay and lesbian rights organizations and leftist political parties during a time span that goes back to the late 1970s. In order to shed new light on the links between protest, interest representation and policy change, including law reform, this article combines the analysis of political opportunities and the exploration of some fundamental decisions taken by social movement organizations on their engagement with mainstream politics. The main argument is that impact in the area of law reform is brought about only when available opportunities for change are seized by politically incorporated social movements.Assuming for a moment that the success of a social movement could be defined as the satisfaction of its main political demands, the passing of recent legislation giving samesex couples in Spain the right to marry (Law 13/2005, 1 July) should be catalogued as an ideal example of total success. Gay and lesbian marriage is what the Spanish gay and lesbian movement wanted the most, and this is what it was given. Considering that Spain became only the third country in the world to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples at the national level, one is immediately prompted to wonder about the causes of such bold a step. Of particular interest is the pace of gay and lesbian rights recognition in Spain in comparison with other Southern European countries. Why has policymaking in Spain become so permeable to the demands of gay and lesbian rights groups? Should the enactment of marriage rights to same-sex couples be taken
ResumenEste artículo explora la relación entre la religiosidad y las preferencias electorales en España y Portugal. Estudiamos si la religión (medida como asistencia a oficios religiosos y opiniones sobre asuntos morales) tiene influencia sobre el voto a los dos principales partidos nacionales. Los resultados del análisis apuntan a una relación diferente entre religión y voto en ambos países: sólo en España las creencias religiosas desempeñan un papel destacado en el comportamiento electoral. Defendemos que la explicación a este hallazgo se encuentra en un conjunto de factores entre los que cabe destacar la diferente configuración del sistema de partidos y de los mapas religiosos, los distintos mecanismos que canalizan las identidades religiosas hacia el voto y, fundamentalmente, el importante papel desempeñado por las elites políticas en la activación de la religiosidad dentro de la competición electoral. PalabRas Clave adiCionalesAgencia política, Comportamiento electoral, Ideología, Religiosidad. abstRaCtThis article explores the relationship between religiosity and voting decisions in Spain and Portugal. We study whether religion (measured as church attendance and opinions about moral issues) influences voting for the two main political parties. Results show a different relationship between religion and voting in both countries: only in Spain religious beliefs play an important role in electoral behaviour. We claim that to account for this finding several factors need to be considered, namely the different configuration of the party systems and religious maps, the distinctive mechanisms linking religious identities with voting and, above all, the important role played by political leaders in activating religiosity within the electoral competition.additional KeywoRds
In this article we centre the attention on LGBT organizations in Spain. We discuss the emergence, evolution and claims of this social movement. The political associations and groups that advocate lesbian, gay and transsexual rights are presented as the voice of sexual communities and peoples. Accordingly, they are treated as a key social and political actor that links the desires and needs of grass-root non-heterosexual peoples with the higher spheres of institutions, politics and the law. The article builds on qualitative data on protesting, claims-making and mobilization to account for the transformation of a major section of the Spanish LGBT movement into a defender of human rights and equality. This is presented as the consequence of internal balances of power, and also as a cause of the de-sexualization of the claims brought before the state by sexual communities in Spain.Spain is in the vanguard of sexual and gender rights recognition. In 2005, some changes in the Civil Code allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry and full adoption rights were also granted. In 2007, a ground-breaking sexual identity allowed transgender people to change their ID without the intervention of surgery. New reproductive rights have also been approved in the form of new assisted reproduction and abortion laws.
Women attracted the lion's share of government initiatives in the area of citizenship rights during the government of Zapatero (2004-08) in Spain. Highlights of these efforts were policies on gender violence and gender equality. We analyze these policies in terms of their scope, people's awareness, implementation and the level of support from other parties in the opposition. We then look for the possible impact of these policies on the gender gap in political interest and on voting orientations. We find only a slight impact on women's voting patterns from IU to PSOE.
Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Non-Technical SummaryJudicial review is the principal means by which people can challenge the legality of action taken by public authorities. As such it is an important tool for providing redress and holding government to account, but does it help to improve services or does it interfere with local authorities and detract from what they should be doing?Many now believe that we are becoming too litigious and overly preoccupied with asserting our rights rather than accepting our responsibilities and that this is interfering with government's ability to act in the public interest. But in fact, our findings indicate that there is much less judicial review litigation against local authorities than is widely assumed and that much of it is concentrated on a small number of London Councils. We also found that, rather than detracting from the quality of local government, an increased level of challenge appears to lead to improvements in levels of performance and is therefore helpful to authorities, rather than a hindrance.In this paper, using both analysis of a specially constructed database of litigation against local authorities and the results of a series of interviews with local authority officials, we investigate: the relationship between judicial review litigation and the quality of local authorities as indicated by the government's performance measures; the incentives to implementing judicial review judgments and the obstacles to doing so; and the difference that judgments make to local authorities.There were two key findings from our quantitative analysis, which we were able to interpret using the interview data:1. All things being equal better performing authorities (as measured by government indicators) were less likely to be challenged than worse performing authorities. This indicates that there is a connection between official measures of quality and the public perceptions of quality. It also suggests that challenge is linked to quality of services and is not unnecessarily stimulated by lawyers.2. We also found evidence that authorities improve (at least in terms of the official measures) when the scale of challenge against them increases. We do not know why this is the case, but it indicates that authorities learn from challenges particularly when the pattern of litigation increases from levels that they have become accustomed to.Overall, for most local authorities legal challenge remains a somewhat rare event. But far from...
rise to the eventual formation of 'the modern homosexual'. It is knowledgeable in its field and discusses the critically queer perspectives of academics from Kobena Mercer to Mary Anne Doane. It also engages with important, relevant poststructuralist theoreticians from Butler to Jean Luc Nancy. Finally, it entertains its readers mightily by introducing such queer cultural delights as the Barbie Liberation Organization and the comic strip Hothead Paisan Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist. However, I can already see the faces of my international students as they search for any acknowledgement of queer cultures or texts beyond Britain and North America, or for any engagement with the theoretical problematizations of western-centric notions of queer and queer theory which I have mentioned. This is a useful if flawed text, indicative of a particular academic moment already passing, and one which can be productively used in the classroom to illustrate precisely that.
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