Legal Threats and the Emergence of Legal Mobilization: Conservative Mobilization in Colombia

Abstract

Though the Colombian Constitutional Court has had a lead role in granting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) rights since 1998, conservatives mobilizing against LGBT rights between 1991 and 2007 were active in Congress and the streets rather than in court. After 2007, however, conservatives have maintained consistent opposition to rights claims made by LGBT people in the Constitutional Court. This article draws from fieldwork examining the significance of the Constitutional Court’s transition from granting rights to LGBT people as individuals to granting rights to LGBT people as couples and potential families to theorize conservative legal mobilization, particularly moral conservatism. To account for the rise of conservative legal mobilization against LGBT rights in Colombia in 2007, this article expands on the legal opportunity structure model. It theorizes that legal threats––that is, changes in legal rules that are perceived to increase the costs of mobilization or the expected costs of not taking action––are among the factors that lead movements to engage in legal mobilization, even if legal opportunities are not expanding.

La política contenciosa y la contramovilización legal conservadora del aborto en Colombia

“…La literatura sociojurídica sobre los movimientos sociales ha analizado los factores que dan pie a la movilización legal de las organizaciones o activistas «conservadoras», entendidas como aquellas que defienden la sexualidad humana ligada a la reproducción bajo concepciones religiosas del mundo que buscan plasmar en normas jurídicas y políticas públicas (Bergallo et al, 2018;Blee & Creasap, 2010;Yamin et al, 2018;Ziegler, 2016). Esta literatura ha considerado como determinantes para el surgimiento y la sostenibilidad de la movilización legal conservadora a las oportunidades políticas, la movilización de recursos, las redes transnacionales, las amenazas que perciben de sus oponentes, las visiones del mundo en Derecho PUCP, N° 88, 2022 / e-ISSN: 2305-2546 juego, y los vínculos entre la abogacía conservadora y las iglesias (Ayoub, 2014;Hoover & Den Dulk, 2004;Lehoucq, 2021;McVeigh & Sikkink, 2001;Southworth, 2005Southworth, , 2008Wilson & Hollis-Brusky, 2014;Yamin et al, 2018).…”

“…A pesar de que se han analizado las dinámicas de movilización y contramovilización entre los movimientos feministas y conservadores en torno al aborto, ha habido poco análisis empírico de estas a lo largo del tiempo con notables excepciones (Banaszak & Ondercin, 2016;Ruibal, 2014Ruibal, , 2015. Sin embargo, aun cuando se estudian estas dinámicas de movilización y contramovilización, todavía son minoritarios los estudios en América Latina que le prestan una atención detallada a las «estrategias legales» de los actores conservadores (Gianella, 2018;Lehoucq, 2021;Lemaitre, 2012;López, 2021;Morán Faúndes et al, 2016). De igual forma, esta literatura en general define la contramovilización conservadora como una «reacción» a la movilización feminista, considerando que su objetivo es promover retrocesos (backlash) respecto de los avances del movimiento de mujeres (Ruibal, 2015;Vaggione, 2018;Yamin et al, 2018).…”

Working in New Political Spaces

“…This back and forth, with policy wins alternating between progressive and conservative forces, is "normal" backlash, in the sense that it is exactly the politics one might expect from any attempt to change society. Indeed, the Latin American experience demonstrates the need to study backlash as an integral part of a dialectical process in which movements and counter-movements turn to legal mobilization (Lehoucq 2021). Consequently, our volume analyzes how the progressive forms of legal mobilization at the heart of the judicialization of politics interact with counter-mobilization, also through judicialization, that seeks to limit the expansion of fundamental rights or horizontal accountability.…”

“…Where progressive grassroots activism is absent, and where conservative values continue to have wide resonance among mass publics, it can be easier for counter-movements to organize in response to the judicialization promoted by elite NGOs. Moreover, taking a page from the progressive playbook, groups defending more conservative approaches to rights and their enforcement also turn to the language of rights, strategic litigation, and legal advocacy as counter-mobilization strategies, making use of the very same superstructure to advance their cause (Lehoucq 2021). The counter-movements that emerged after initial advances in sexual and reproductive rights in Colombia (Ruibal 2014) and Argentina (Peñas Defago and Morán Faúndes 2014) are excellent examples of religious and conservative groups deploying the strategies traditionally used by progressive civil society organizations in response to court and legislative victories.…”

“We’re not there yet” but it’s not “pie-in-the-sky”: Legal Consciousness, Decertification and the Equality Sector in England and Wales

“…To the extent that the paper is interested in decertification as a future, conscious deployment of law and its formal institutions to effect social change, and in the conditions in which decertification might "fly", it overlaps with legal mobilisation (for a good overview of the conceptual relationship between legal consciousness and legal mobilisation, see Lehoucq and Taylor 2020) and the political opportunity structure discussed by social movement theorists (see, e.g., McAdam et al 1996;McCann 2006;Meyer 2004;Meyer and Minkoff 2004). Whilst beyond the scope of this paper, future research could usefully develop these interconnected lines of analysis (for relevant, contemporary examples, see Lehoucq 2021;Vanhala 2012).…”