Mapping the anti-LGBTQ mobilization in Europe: Family discourse for social exclusion
Katja Kahlina and Anna Moring
In this blog entry we discuss the recent mobilization against the rights of LGBTQ people and the concept of gender, which has taken place since the early 2010s in Europe. In addition to mapping out different strategies and rhetoric used by the anti-LGBTQ actors operating in the European context, our aim in this blog is to shed the light on the ways in which the notion of family has been hijacked by the anti-LGBTQ/anti-gender movements, and to consider the implications that this hijacking has on the activism directed towards greater social emancipation in relation to gender and sexuality.
The recent mobilization against same-sex marriages and the concept of gender (often accompanied by the resistance to safe and legal abortion as well) has taken different forms of action. News in July 2019 have given us pictures of anti-LGBTQ actions in Poland, where the governing party PiS is openly anti-gay. The newspaper Gazeta Polska, openly supportive of PiS, has been distributing “LGBT-free zone” stickers with its late July issue.
In France in the period between 2012 and 2014, the association gathered under the name Protest for All (La Manif pour tous in French) organized a series of protests in Paris and other French cities against the announced “marriage for all” bill, designed to extend the marriage right, and all the associated rights, to same-sex couples. Although unsuccessful in achieving its aims (the “marriage for all” bill was adopted despite the protests), Protest for All served as an inspiration to similar initiatives and actions in other European countries. Following the events in France, the initiative Demonstrations for All (Demo für Alle in German) became active in Germany, organizing protests against same-sex marriages. Similarly, Italian Protest for All Italy and Finnish True Marriage (Aito Avioliitto in Finnish) organizations claim direct connection to Protest for All, sharing the same logo and other visual identifiers.
Another common way of countering marriage liberalization in Europe in the same period are the so-called “marriage referendums.” Since 2012, a couple of referendums against the extension of marriage to same-sex couples took place (in Slovenia in 2012 and 2015, in Croatia in 2013, in Slovakia in 2015, and in Romania in 2018). Also, Finland found its newly established same-sex marriage law challenged by a citizens’ initiative in 2017. Due to country-specific differences in the referendum legislation, only Slovenian and Croatian referendums brought the desired result: stalling the re-definition of marriage in the way that would include same-sex couples. Notwithstanding the mixed success, all these actions managed to gain significant local visibility and galvanize larger mobilization against the more inclusionary definitions of marriage and family.
Euroscepticism, nationalism, and anti-immigration
In some countries, such as Poland and Hungary, the anti-LGBTQ agenda has closely been linked with the anti-EU sentiments. Joanna Chnojka (2015), who has written on the anti-LGBTQ attitudes in Poland, shows that these attitudes are attuned to the feelings of strangeness and distance from both LGBTQ issues and the EU. LGBTQ issues are felt to be something incompatible with the conservative values, and “patriotic and religious national identity constructions” that those resisting LGBTQ rights share. The promotors of anti-LGBTQ agenda claim that these issues are imposed on Poland by the EU, and hence resist both the LGBTQ rights and the European Union.
Although Euroscepticism is not consistently present in different national contexts, the anti-LGBTQ movements have often drawn on ethno-nationalism, civilizationism, and racism. This is particularly visible in the way in which anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ policies are combined in this context. One of the best examples of this is the speech that Viktor Orban, a Hungarian Prime Minister, gave at the opening of the World Congress of Families, a transnational platform which gathers together a wide array of anti-LGBTQ actors. In his address to the Congress, Orban argued that “[i]n the struggle for the future of Europe stopping illegal migration is imperative. This struggle – which is rationally justified – is only worthwhile if we are able to combine it with a family policy which restores natural reproduction on the continent.”
Hijacking the concept of family
The idea that marriage and family have been endangered by the demands for more inclusive formulations, and thus are in need of protection, is one of the key mobilizing strategies against LGBTQ rights present among these new anti-LGBTQ/anti-gender movements. Thus, all the above mentioned referendums were initiated by the citizens’ coalitions claiming to protect the family and the concept of marriage: in Slovenia, referendum was initiated by the Civil Initiative for Family and Rights of Children; in Croatia, the initiator was a group called On Behalf of the Family; in Slovakia it was Alliance for Family, while Romanian referendum was brought by the Coalition for Family, and in Finland by the True Marriage movement, which aims to “protect children’s human right to a mother and a father” (Aito Avioliitto).
This so-called “pro-family” frame is also evident in the joint EU-wide action Mum, Dad, and Kids, which used a European Citizens’ Initiative mechanism to call for the strict definition of marriage and family applicable to all the relevant EU laws, regulations, and policies. In particular, the initiative asked for the adoption of the EU regulation that would define marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman”.
Although it failed to collect a required number of signatures across the EU in given time, the initiative brought together a great number of leading anti-LGBTQ actors in Europe. Among the organizers of Mum, Dad and Kids were the leader of the French Protest for Everyone movement and the leader of Croatian On Behalf of the Family association.
These examples show how the new anti-LGBTQ-movements sport a systematic emphasis on the notion of family, used as the key concept through which same-sex marriages are opposed. On the one hand, the “pro-family” wording of the opponents of same-sex marriage conceals the harmful and exclusionary implications of their demands. In cases such as France, Croatia, Slovenia, and Finland, the opponents of same-sex marriages actively negated any association with homophobia, arguing that their concern was only marriage, family, and well-being of children.
Thus (re)claiming the concept of family represents an important challenge for the future of feminist and LGBTQ activism. By framing their activism as an activity that is first and foremost focused on the institution of family and its protection, the anti-LGBTQ actors positioned themselves as sole authorities on the meanings of family. To be pro-LGBTQ-rights is thus constructed as being anti-family, and anti-children’s rights. The challenge for LGBTQ and other emancipatory activism is thus to counter the pro-family discourse in ways that contest the right-wing movements’ sole and uncontested claim to the concept.
Also, and equally important, the use of family as the key term opens a space for mobilization of emotions and affects associated with the notion of family. Campaigns against same-sex marriages have often been imbued with very emotional appeals for “protection” of family as something that is sacred, that is in the basis of our communities, and which secures the well-being of children. Chmilewski and Hajek (2018, 177) recognize three narratives, which this project centrally builds on:
The crisis of the family as a fundamental crisis of society
A contradictory interpellation of the state as threatening privacy of the family while simultaneously protecting it and
Stylization of the heterosexist family as normal, and therefore deserving protection.
In order to build effective strategies to counter this new transnational anti-LGBTQ mobilization, people working for greater LGBTQ emancipation need to be aware of these narratives and find ways to address these specific issues in their agenda. The affective strength built in the notion of family is undeniable, and the insight into the anti-LGBTQ movements across Europe shows how the new right-wing movements have developed a joint emotional pedagogy to normalize and domesticate their anti-LGBTQ, nationalist and heterosexist agenda.
In our next blog entry, we will consider ways to address these issues and to reclaim the notion of family on a national and European levels from a non-exclusionary, emancipatory perspective.
Katja Kahlina and Anna Moring
Katja Kahlina, PhD, works as a researcher at the University of Helsinki where she leads the project Sexuality and democracy: Exploring the links and re-thinking the concepts for feminist politics (SEXDEM). The project is funded by the Kone Foundation’s Bold Initiatives grant.
Anna Moring, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the project Contrasting and Re-Imagining the Margins of Kinship. She also works as chief specialist for the Network of Family Diversity in Finland.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 706706 and by Kone Foundation Bold Initiatives grant. This support is acknowledged with thanks.
References and further readings:
Chmilewski, K. and Hajek, K. (2018). Mobilizing affects about intimate relationships. Emotional pedagogy among the New Right in Germany. In Juvonen, Tuula & Kolehmainen, Marjo (eds.) Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships. Routledge, New York, pp. 171-185.
Chnojka, J. (2015). Anti-EU and Anti-LGBT attitudes in Poland: Considering quantitative and qualitative evidence. Baltic Journal of European Studies, 5(2), 30-55.
Fassin, E. (2016). Gender and the problem of Universals: Catholic mobilization and sexual democracy in France. Religion and Gender, 6(2), 173-186. doi: 10.18352/rg.10157
Kováts, E. and Põim, M. (ed.) (2015). Gender as Symbolic Glue: The Position and Role of Conservative and Far-Right Parties in the Anti-Gender Mobilizations in Europe. Budapest: FEPS and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Budapest.
Kuhar, R. and D. Paternotte (2017). Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s opening speech at the 2nd Budapest World Congress of Families 2017 https://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-opening-speech-at-the-2nd-budapest-world-congress-of-families