Matthew Waites

The global politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights: an introduction

This introduction provides a brief overview of key political developments in global lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizing and advocacy over the past three decades as well as a summary of recent academic research and debates on these issues in politics, sociology and other disciplines. It introduces the three questions addressed by the volumes subsequent contributions: (1) How can recent global developments related to LGBT human rights advocacy and organizing be explained by political and sociological theories? (2) What is at stake in focusing on ‘human rights’ rather than concepts such as ‘equality’, ‘justice’, ‘liberation’, ‘self-determination’ and/or ‘queer politics’? (3) How do transnational human rights networks and global norms of LGBT rights affect domestic politics in both the global North and global South? The article pays particular attention to the ‘human rights turn’ of the LGBT movements in the early 1990s and the political successes and failures that have ensued. Finally, it summarizes the main findings of the volumes contributions and how they relate to the questions raised in this introduction.

Equality at last? Homosexuality, heterosexuality and the age of consent in the United Kingdom

The so-called ‘gay age of consent’ was the most high-profile issue in UK lesbian, gay and bisexual politics during the 1990s. Campaigning for an equal age of consent provoked a series of extended public and parliamentary debates, concluding with the passage of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act (2000).This article analyses these debates to reveal emerging social relationships between heterosexuality and homosexuality. It is argued that age of consent debates witnessed the ascendance of a new ‘hegemony’ supporting ‘equality at 16’, constituted through the interweaving of knowledge-claims generated within the mainstream epistemologies of biomedicine, law, criminology and child welfare.The analysis integrates critical sociological perspectives on these various forms of knowledge, with reference to epistemological transformations occurring in late modernity. Particular attention focuses on claims concerning the age at which the fixity of sexual identities is established. It is argued that the debate’s structure enabled ‘equality at 16’ to be endorsed alongside the persistent operation of rationales of containment in the political mainstream, and hence that legal equality does not imply recognition of the equal value of homosexuality and heterosexuality. The implications are examined for ongoing struggles over sex offences, Section 28, and the social status of same-sex sexualities.

The Fixity of Sexual Identities in the Public Sphere: Biomedical Knowledge, Liberalism and the Heterosexual/Homosexual Binary in Late Modernity

This article analyses the persistence of the heterosexual/homosexual binary in contemporary society, by examining the circulation of knowledge-claims concerning the age at which the ‘fixity’ of ‘sexual orientation’ is established. It examines how the ‘scientific’ claims of medical authorities have been utilized in recent debates in the UK over equalization of the age of consent, and argues that such claims have persisted in influence through debates over repeal of Section 28 and legalization of adoption by same-sex couples. The analysis integrates social constructionist and queer perspectives on sexual identities from sociological and cultural theory, perspectives from political theory on contemporary liberalism, and an analysis of biomedical knowledge in late modernity. It is argued that the increasing assertion of claims for equality, citizenship and recognition of cultural diversity in mainstream politics is occurring largely within a persistent ‘rationale of containment’ which seeks to minimize the prevalence of homosexuality. This draws attention to particular tensions and dynamics operating in the lives of bisexuals and queers, and especially in the lives of young people.

Sociology and human rights: confrontations, evasions and new engagements

Sociologists have struggled to negotiate their relationship to human rights, yet human rights are now increasingly the focus of innovative sociological analysis. This opening contribution to ‘Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements’ analyses how the relationship between sociology and human rights could be better conceptualised and taken forward in the future. The historical development of the sociology of human rights is first examined, with emphasis on the uneasy distancing of sociology from universal rights claims from its inception, and on radical repudiations influenced by Marx. We discuss how in the post-war period T.H. Marshalls work generated analysis of citizenship rights, but only in the past two decades has the sociology of human rights been developed by figures such as Bryan Turner, Lydia Morris and Anthony Woodiwiss. We then introduce the individual contributions to the volume, and explain how they are grouped. We suggest the need to deepen existing analyses of what sociology can offer to the broad field of human rights scholarship, but also, more unusually, that sociologists need to focus more on what human rights related research can bring to sociology, to renew it as a discipline. Subsequent sections take this forward by examining a series of themes including: the relationship between the individual and the social; the need to address inequality; the challenge of social engagement and activism; and the development of interdisciplinarity. We note how authors in the volume contribute to each of these. Finally we conclude by summarising our proposals for future directions in research.

Human rights, sexual orientation and the generation of childhoods: analysing the partial decriminalisation of ‘unnatural offences’ in India

What is the relationship between global struggles over ‘sexual orientation’ and human rights, and sociological, legal and ‘queer’ understandings of sexuality and childhood? On 2 July 2009, the struggle in India to end the criminalisation of adult same-sex sexual behaviour by Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a legacy of the British Empire, achieved a landmark victory. The Delhi High Court ruled in favour of a petition by the Naz Foundation, supported by the Voices Against 377 coalition, to decriminalise oral and anal sex in private for adults. The analysis presented here argues that not only the chief justice who made the ruling, but also many campaigners in favour of the petition, strategically invoked a definition of childhood which is colonial in origin. This was problematically articulated in relation to sexual acts other than heteronormative intercourse, together with Indian constitutional rights, international human rights and ‘childrens rights’ which facilitate ‘protection’ from unlawful sexual activity by adults – thus proscribing many young peoples sexual lives.

Inventing a ‘Lesbian Age of Consent’? The History of the Minimum Age for Sex between Women in the UK

This article analyses historical and contemporary debates over age of consent legislation regulating sex between women in the UK. A minimum age for sexual activity between females was created by the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1922, which removed ‘consent’ as a defence to the offence of ‘indecent assault’ against a girl under the age of 16, yet prosecutions remained extremely rare until recent years. The article analyses parliamentary debates surrounding the creation of this legislation to investigate whether and how sex between females was represented. It then examines how the subject was addressed at a series of historical moments when age of consent laws were subject to official review. It is argued that the recent invention of a ‘lesbian age of consent’ in popular and professional legal discourse signals changes in the ways in which the law is interpreted and implemented. In conclusion, the article argues that while a standardization and equalization of the law applying in male-female, male-male and female-female contexts is desirable, an appreciation of the specific form and history of the age of consent applying to sex between females raises particular questions concerning the impact of reformulating age of consent laws.

Homosexuality and the new right: the legacy of the 1980s for new delineations of homophobia

This article addresses the relationship between the New Right and the politics of homosexuality in the United Kingdom. It begins by outlining recent political conflicts surrounding attempts to equalise the ‘gay age of consent’ and to repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988). The article then examines the New Rights relationship to homosexuality in the 1980s, and the history of socio-political analyses of this relationship. It is argued that pro-gay left theorists have tended to homogenize the New Right of the 1980s, with negative consequences for the analysis of more recent right-wing transformations. The article suggests that contemporary right-wing campaigns against equalisation of the age of consent and abolition of Section 28 need to be understood as the product of a complex right-wing alliance between old-style Conservatism and new right-wing generations. The sexual values of William Hague and Michael Portillo are very different from those of Margaret Thatcher or Norman Tebbit. More mediated forms of homophobia have surfaced in recent campaigns, particularly in the defence of Section 28. New analytical tools are needed to map ‘new delineations of homophobia’ emerging in the political language of the right, operating within a new terrain of sexual politics. The conclusion suggests ways in which such a perspective could inform future sociological and political research agendas.

The Age of Consent and Sexual Citizenship in the United Kingdom: a History

What is an ‘age of consent’, and how does it contribute to defining and regulating sexual life? Contemporary public debates, such as those surrounding attempts to lower the male homosexual ‘age of consent’ during 1998–9, often ignore even the recent history of this shifting concept. This chapter explores changing understandings of the ‘age of consent’ in the United Kingdom from a historical perspective. It discusses several periods when political debates and changes to the law have restructured definitions of the ‘age of consent’, and explores the forms of power and resistance which have shaped the law and social attitudes. It then moves on to explore how the meaning of the age of consent is currently being contested, and signals how the concept might be rethought in the light of developments in social and political theory, particularly in relation to changing understandings of ‘citizenship’. The chapter concludes by examining whether recent developments support claims that sexuality is becoming more democratically negotiated. It argues that the evidence is complex and contradictory, demanding an analysis which is sensitive to gendered attitudes, a complex legal context and the variety of forms of sexual behaviour. Nevertheless, changing understandings of the relationship between sexuality, consent and citizenship are apparent.

Analysing sexualities in the shadow of war: Islam in Iran, the West and the work of reimagining human rights

We live in the shadow of war. A confrontation between Iran, the United States and Israel, if ignited, would escalate existing violence worldwide and could become nuclear. This situation has been produced in part by the Iranian state, from which President Ahmadinejad proclaims a desire to end the existence of the state of Israel while simultaneously questioning the ‘myth’ of the Holocaust; in part also, by the history of self-interested, anti-democratic interventions in the Middle East of the USA and other western powers, including support for Israeli oppression of Palestinians; and by the USA’s current refusal of diplomatic dialogue alongside military threats against an Iran seeking nuclear technology. Meanwhile Pakistan, which, like Israel, already possesses nuclear weapons, risks falling under the rule of Islamic fundamentalists. All this takes place in the context of culture wars between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ (both problematically homogenized in dominant representations), which have a long history including the Algerian War (1954–1962) and the Iranian revolution founding the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, but became heightened in focus from 2001 after the events of 9/11. These global culture wars are centrally focused on issues of gender and sexuality. The discourses of the US and UK governments have come to focus on gender as a central, rather than marginal issue, in tandem with the Sexualities 11(1/2)

Lesbian and gay theory, sexuality and citizenship

David Evans, Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, (Routledge, London 1993). 352pp. ISBN 0–4150–058007 Didi Herman, Rights of Passage: Struggles for Lesbian and Gay Equality, (University of Toronto Press, London 1994). ix+198pp. ISBN 0–8020–7231–3. Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1992). 212pp. ISBN 0–8047–2214–5. Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds, (Routledge, London 1995). xii+244pp. ISBN 0–415–10296–0. Jeffrey Weeks, Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty, (Polity Press, Cambridge 1995). xiii+209pp. ISBN 0–7456–1369–1. Angelia R. Wilson (ed), A Simple Matter of Justice? Theorising Lesbian and Gay Politics, (Cassell, London 1995). xi+226pp. ISBN 0–304–32955‐X.